


That Glorious Strength

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Voldemort, Different Magical Schools, Gen, Mentor Tom Riddle, Muggleborns, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Pureblood Bigotry, Revolution, Sane Tom Riddle, Squibs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:09:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26333881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Instead of becoming Voldemort, Tom Riddle established a school of “secondary importance” for Muggleborns, half-bloods, and Squibs. Since the school frees Hogwarts to continue drifting more towards the purebloods’ whims and wishes, they haven’t raised any large fuss. Besides, everyone knows that half-bloods and Muggleborns don’t have any real power. Just look at Riddle, who had ambitions that outpaced his magical strength. They don’t see the revolution coalescing under the surface.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Lucius Malfoy, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter, Hermione Granger & Tom Riddle, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Severus Snape & Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 528
Kudos: 2038





	1. Home Visits

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story idea I’ve been brewing in my mind for a long time, and finally decided to write. I don’t have any idea how long it will be at the moment. The title is a twist on “that hideous strength,” used as a title by C. S. Lewis and from a poem by David Lyndsay.

“I only want you to understand the kind of world that you will be coming into if you choose Hogwarts.”

It had been hours since Mr. Malfoy left, and still his words were echoing in Hermione’s head. She sat at the table in the dining room and shivered, her eyes locked on the pamphlets about Hogwarts.

It had sounded so _wonderful_ when Professor McGonagall came to talk to her several months ago. The best magical school in Britain! Small classes! A House that would be like your family, and traditions of many wonderful witches and wizards growing up there and going on to be a credit to the school!

And best of all, the chance to leave behind schools where she had always been ostracized for her intelligence and find a whole new system where people wouldn’t care about that because they were there to _study magic_ just like she was, and what could be better than that?

And then Mr. Malfoy had come in and told her that because her parents were _Muggles,_ she would never find social acceptance.

“Hermione? Are you all right, dear?”

Hermione swallowed the tears and glanced up with as brave a smile as she could at her mum, who was standing in the doorway of the kitchen and staring at her worriedly. “I’m fine, Mum. It’s just…the fees for Hogwarts are going to be really expensive.”

“We can afford it, don’t worry.” Mum came over and hugged her. Hermione leaned into her arms and felt a little calmer. “And I’m sure that you’ll make all sorts of friends once you’re around other people like you!”

“Yeah,” Hermione whispered, and kept smiling until her mum went back into the kitchen. Then she closed her eyes.

She didn’t want to tell her parents what Mr. Malfoy had said. They might not let her learn magic at all, and Hermione _wanted_ to. Even knowing that she was going to be different and looked-down on…that wasn’t all that different from the rest of her life, right? She could still go, and learn magic, and even if she had to leave the magical world after Hogwarts and get a job in the Muggle world, she could do it. She was _smart._ She could study for her Muggle exams at the same time as she working on her magical homework.

But it still made Hermione’s chest feel as if it was filled with snow. She had so hoped Hogwarts would be different, and she’d feel comfortable there and have friends. She had _hoped._

“Maybe it’s time to put away childish things,” she whispered to herself, and wiped some tears off her cheeks.

She’d just started to stand up when someone knocked briskly on the front door. Hermione glanced into the kitchen, but her mum didn’t react. Maybe she hadn’t heard it. And Dad was probably still at the office.

Hermione went to the door and opened it.

And her life changed, although she didn’t know it at the time.

“Miss Hermione Granger?” The man standing in front of her was tall, with dark hair that he kept short, and he was wearing a quietly good suit, the kind that some people wore when they dropped their spouses off at her parents’ office. But looking into his eyes, Hermione was suddenly sure he was a wizard.

“Yes, sir,” she said, since the man looked like he was at least in his forties. “Can I help you?” She hoped it wasn’t another scolding about Hogwarts and how much people would hate her. This man didn’t look as rich as Mr. Malfoy, but he had money to buy a suit like that.

“I have a message for you about another school besides Hogwarts that you could attend. May I come in?”

Hermione snapped her gaze up to his face again. He had dark eyes, grey, she thought, and he was looking at her with a faint smile. She took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t want to go out of the country.”

“Oh, this school is in Britain. In London, in fact.” The man seemed to enjoy Hermione’s staring at him, from the way his smile widened. “It’s a rather different school than Hogwarts, which is probably why they haven’t mentioned it.” He looked into the house, then looked back at Hermione with his eyebrows raised.

Hermione knew she was bright red, but it was hard to stop staring and step aside. “Sorry, sir. Come in.”

The man strolled in and nodded at the neat, understated wallpaper and the seascape on the wall with the same amount of attention that Mr. Malfoy had sneered at them. Or so Hermione thought. She supposed that she didn’t know a thing about what wizarding homes looked like, so she couldn’t be sure. Maybe their walls were all marble and the pictures all talked back. That had been something Professor McGonagall had mentioned.

“Um, did you want something to drink?” Hermione glanced towards the kitchen. It was strange her mum hadn’t come out to see who was in the house.

The man followed her gaze. “I put up a charm to keep this conversation private,” he said quietly. “I assume that you’ve already received the official Hogwarts visit as well as the unofficial one?”

Hermione swallowed and nodded. Then she blurted out, because she had to ask _someone,_ “Sir, is what Mr. Malfoy says really true? Do people hate students with Muggle parents at Hogwarts?”

“Not everyone,” the man said. “Professor McGonagall, for example, if she is the one who made the first visit to you?” Hermione nodded. “She does not. But her father was a Muggle, and she is unusual among Hogwarts staff. Many of them are either purebloods or half-bloods who violently hate Muggles because they were abused by them. And the children follow what their parents tell them.”

Hermione closed her eyes. “So I would suffer there.”

“Yes. And—forgive me, Miss Granger, but I’ve looked up your academic record. I think you would suffer regardless.”

“Because I’m not good enough for Hogwarts?” A whole new worry gripped Hermione’s throat.

The man smiled and shook his head. “Because you have the kind of marks that would place you above ninety-nine percent of the purebloods you’d encounter there. And that means they would despise you. Try to hurt you.”

Hermione stared at him. “ _Physically_ hurt?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. If you’ve purchased one book already, it’s probably _Hogwarts, A History,_ and you’ll have heard about the trick steps and the hidden rooms and the staircases that switch destinations?” The man waited until she nodded, then pulled out a chair at the dining room table and took it. “It’s so easy to hex someone else and blame their falls or stumbles or any physical damage on the structure of the school. And with your parents back in the Muggle world and unable to learn of what happens to you except by owl, who can say whether they would be informed at all?” The man studied her, then nodded. “And you would probably still want to attend Hogwarts, even so. Even if it meant you had to lie to your parents. Our kind want magic, need it and deserve it. You probably haven’t told your parents about what Mr. Malfoy said at all, have you?”

Hermione clasped her hands together and whispered, “You’re starting to scare me with how accurately you can predict this, sir. Or were you watching the house?”

“Closely enough to see Malfoy’s visit,” the man agreed, with a shallow nod that made him look like he was keeping his eyes up to watch for danger. “But forgive me, I haven’t even told you my name. I’m Headmaster Thomas Riddle of the Fortius Academy. I teach Defense, as well.”

“Fortius? Is that like Forte?”

“Close.” Professor Riddle smiled at her and leaned forwards in the chair. “It’s the Latin word for ‘stronger,’ as well. And I’d like to offer you a place at the Fortius Academy, Miss Granger.” He pulled a letter out of his robe pocket and held it towards her.

Hermione took it slowly. The parchment felt like the one that her Hogwarts letter had come on, but less thick. She turned it over and saw what was presumably the seal of the academy, a silver wheel split into four sections with different animals on them. Hermione squinted a little, and made out a winged horse, a snake-like dragon, a bird that seemed to have pointed feathers all over it, and a creature that looked like a cat with a bird’s head.

“What are these creatures? And why do they allow you to have the Academy if you take students from them? And why do you want to invite me? Is it just my marks?”

Professor Riddle held up his hand to stem the tide, which made Hermione apologize, but he just shook his head. “No, it’s natural for someone as smart as you are, Miss Granger. To take your questions in order. The creatures are the symbols of our four Houses, which are based on but different from the Hogwarts ones. You’ll be Sorted based on your magical affinity. The winged horse indicates those whose affinities tend towards air, Herbology, and mind magic. You’ll Sort into the House of the Dragon if your affinities lead you towards water, Divination, and offensive spells. The House of the Phoenix—” Hermione reckoned that must be the bird with the pointy feathers, which weren’t feathers, but flames “—is for those associated with fire, Charms, and the magic of creation. And the House of the Gryphon represents the earth, Transfiguration, and defensive magic.

“Hogwarts wants you to attend because they want your tuition and fees.” Professor Riddle sighed. “It wasn’t so, always, but the purebloods took control of the Board of Governors and began to change things to their liking. They tolerate my academy’s existence because they think it skims off the _undesirables,_ so to speak. They’ll tolerate your leaving because you’re Muggleborn. They’d fight harder to keep a half-blood, and I’ve been warned never to approach pureblood students.”

Hermione nodded quietly. “And do you invite every Muggleborn in the United Kingdom, sir?”

“The ones whose mindset is conducive to Fortius and who show the power to attend, yes.”

“I hadn’t considered there might be different levels of magical strength. Can you tell me how strong I am? How strong are you? Mr. Malfoy said something about how purebloods are always the strongest.”

Professor Riddle considered her closely, as if the question covered more than Hermione knew. Hermione bit her lip but maintained the stare. It sounded more and more like she would be better off going to Fortius, but she didn’t want to attend a school where she would be afraid to ask questions.

“I _am_ going to have to ask you to swear an oath not to reveal the results of what I’m going to show you, Miss Granger.”

“Why not?” Hermione demanded. She had managed to read all her schoolbooks between Professor McGonagall’s visit and Mr. Malfoy’s, and she didn’t want to swear an oath that could literally kill her.

“Because a great deal of pureblood propaganda is based on the idea of their having greater magical strength. Therefore, I pretend that I only take the weak students—”

“And you pretend to be weaker yourself than you really are!” Hermione said triumphantly, before she clapped her hands across her mouth. Her primary school teachers had always hated it when she interrupted.

Professor Riddle only smiled, though. “Indeed. I think Fortius will be very lucky to have you, Miss Granger.”

“Will you show me how strong you are, sir?”

Professor Riddle considered her closely enough that Hermione began to feel that she shouldn’t have asked the question. But then he nodded and sat back, and when he held out his hand in front of him and closed his eyes, Hermione gasped a little. The feeling of magic bearing down on her was overwhelming. It was a feathery, tickling pressure that crowded the edges of her eyes and filled her nose and made her want to sneeze.

Professor Riddle’s fingers flexed, and suddenly the skin on his palm _slid_ aside and a vine grew up from it. Hermione stared in awe as it turned a little, and flexed, and opened silver leaves and a silver flower and swayed back and forth in a wind she couldn’t feel.

Then Professor Riddle snapped his fingers and the vine and the flower crumbled into shining dust that flew over and seemed to meld into the walls. Professor Riddle shook his hand and silently turned his palm towards Hermione. Hermione leaned closer, not sure what he wanted her to see.

Then she saw. There were small dents in the center of his palm where the vine’s roots had been.

Hermione shivered. It hadn’t been an illusion, like some of her magical books had talked about. It had been _real._ She looked at Professor Riddle with wary respect, and found him studying her with raised eyebrows.

“Some Muggleborn children would run in fear after seeing that display,” he said. “Do you want to come to Fortius?”

“Can you teach me to do that?”

Luckily, he got the spirit of her question rather than the literal meaning. “Yes. I think your magic will be strong enough to create any alterations you want, although some have magic more attuned to alterations of objects, some to the alteration of the body, and some to altering animals…”

Hermione settled down to absorb all the information she could, determined that she would attend Fortius and swear any oath she had to. She would have to tell her parents something about Hogwarts that wouldn’t alarm them so much they wouldn’t let her go to Fortius, either.

But she was _going_ to go. And it wasn’t just that Professor Riddle had a school specifically for Muggleborns. Hermione was smart enough to know that he must have a reason for establishing Fortius, that he wouldn’t have done it out of the good of his heart.

That reason had to be _change._

She wanted to be a part of it.

*

Tom Riddle smiled slightly as he marked Hermione Granger’s name off his list and stepped briskly to the side of the thestral he’d left eating a mouse under a Disillusionment Charm in a Muggle garden. There was little chance that anyone else magical who had seen death lived in the street, but Malfoy might have left a spy behind.

For a moment, Tom let his hands clench in the thestral’s mane, causing the reptilian horse to lift her head to stare at him. Tom got himself under control a second later, and nodded his apology to the mare, slinging a leg across her back. The thestral snorted but stood placidly. For the most part, the Hogwarts herd had accepted Tom’s invitation to come with him when he established Fortius, and the fact that he treated them like the intelligent creatures they were was the main reason why.

The next child on his list wouldn’t have received a visit from Malfoy or a Hogwarts letter yet, and so would perhaps be a bit harder to deal with. But Tom knew some of the reasons that that child was living in the Muggle world, and he thought he could exert the right amount of pressure and persuasion.

He touched the thestral’s neck and whispered the destination, and she stretched her wings and sprang into the air. Tom Disillusioned himself, as well, as she rose high and fast and turned to the southwest.

London passed under him, a tangle of buildings that Tom loved to watch. There had been a time he was desperate to escape it, but, well, the war had been over for a long time. He had lived. He had survived being a supposed Mudblood in Slytherin House.

He had survived the revelation that being the descendant of Slytherin meant nothing to the majority of purebloods in the same House, not with his Muggle last name and Muggle living situation. He had shown off his Parseltongue by then, but luckily not his magical strength.

Malfoy’s father had laughed at him, and told him that descending from an inbred Squib and a Muggle man negated any supposed influence of Slytherin’s blood. Then he had led two other boys in beating Tom nearly hard enough to break his legs. They wouldn’t waste magic on a Mudblood.

Tom went still and cold when he thought of that, but the thestral was hardly unused to that sort of thing. She continued her steady flight, and soon she was swooping down towards one of those unimaginative neighborhoods that always made Tom wonder if he wouldn’t succeed in charming the Muggleborn children who lived in them. Someone who had grown up in an area like this might have an imagination as narrow as the streets, might not _want_ to come to Fortius and study magic.

But he would not wish defeat on himself before he had begun. The thestral landed in the right place—they had the genius for places that post-owls did for names—and screeched softly. Tom patted her and dismounted, gazing at the large house in front of him.

He glanced down at the list in his hand. Yes, the address matched.

He crossed the neat garden, knocked on the door, and asked for Harry Potter.


	2. The Sacred Hunt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the reviews! I hope the story will live up to your expectations.

Harry sighed as he leaned against the back of his cupboard. It was far too small for him now, but the day was so hot that the shade was almost welcome. Aunt Petunia had had him working in the garden until almost noon, and then Harry had convinced her he was on the brink of collapse and one of the neighbors might say something.

Of course, his throat still ached, dry, and his stomach still rumbled, empty. But those were things he was used to. He wasn’t used to heatstroke.

Distantly, he heard someone knock on the door, heard an unfamiliar voice say something, heard Aunt Petunia’s shrill reply. But he didn’t expect those things to have anything to do with him. He shut his eyes and groped in his mind after the dream he’d had last night.

Sometimes Harry almost thought he could remember his parents.

He knew from stray comments that Aunt Petunia had dropped that his mum’s name had been Lily, and she had had green eyes like his and red hair. Harry knew nothing about his father except that he was supposedly a drunk.

But in the dream, his parents were strong and kind, and they had been holding him. His father, who had dark hair and glasses like Harry, had bent down and hugged them and whispered, “Lily, get him to Serious.” Harry, now that he was awake, wondered what kind of place Serious was.

His mum had shaken her head. “No, darling. Come with me, _run_ —”

And then there had been a horrible noise like the banging of drums, but Harry had lost the rest of the dream because Dudley had woken him up leaping down the stairs. He didn’t know if the drums were really part of the dream or not.

“Boy!”

Harry jumped as the door of the cupboard went flying open. Aunt Petunia loomed beyond it, staring at him with such hatred that Harry immediately assumed Dudley had made up another story about Harry hurting him.

He was just opening his mouth to deny it when she snapped, “There’s a _freak_ here to see you.”

Harry stood up and left the cupboard uncertainly. He didn’t really know what she could mean. Harry was a freak because he had no parents, and sometimes strange things happened around him. Why would someone else who was also an orphan come and visit him? Was there a Society of Freaks or something?

Was this someone from an orphanage?

Harry’s throat and stomach were both clenching with new sensations as he walked out into the drawing room and saw the man sitting there on the chair where Uncle Vernon usually sat to watch the telly. He stopped. The man didn’t look at all like someone Aunt Petunia would have thought was a freak. He had neat hair and clean nails and wore a _suit._

Harry glanced over his shoulder, but Aunt Petunia had gone back into the kitchen. Harry thought she was almost running. He turned to the man on the couch and opened his mouth.

“Just a moment,” said the man, and pulled out a white stick from his sleeve. Harry blinked at it. He blinked even harder when the man swept the stick through the air, seemed to listen intently for a moment, and then nodded and put it away.

“Now we can speak freely,” said the man, and smiled at him. “My name is Professor Thomas Riddle. I know that you probably already know about Hogwarts, but I’m from the Fortius Academy.” He paused.

He seemed to expect an answer. Harry obliged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Riddle blinked and stared at him. Then he said, “I mean that there are two different schools of magic that might compete for your attendance, Mr. Potter.”

Harry snorted and folded his arms. Riddle was kind of impressive, true, but Harry had dealt with impressive teachers before. All of them backed away from him when it turned out that the Dursleys denied his abuse. Harry had never found someone who would persist beyond that initial denial. And this was a silly prank. Or maybe a means of luring him away from the Dursleys’ abuse and doing some of the things people discussed in dark voices at his primary school. “I’m going to Stonewall. I know that. That’s all the Dursleys will pay for.”

Riddle studied him in silence for a second. Harry shifted his weight. This wasn’t going exactly as he’d thought it would. “You can get up and walk out any second now,” he added. “And tell whoever put you up to this that it didn’t work.”

“Do you know of magic, Harry?”

“My name is _Potter_ to you, Riddle.”

For some reason, that made an odd smile cross Riddle’s face. He leaned back in his chair, flung one leg over the other, and said, “I imagine that whoever put you here didn’t think your relatives would deny the existence of magic altogether. They thought they would abuse you and make you all the more relieved to escape into a magical world, no matter how you might be treated there.”

Harry stared at him. “You’re _still_ on about magic? I don’t know a lot, but I know magic doesn’t exist.”

“No, you don’t know a lot,” Riddle agreed coolly. “Listen to me, Harry Potter. You are magical. A wizard. The child of a wizard and a witch—”

“Aunt Petunia’s said my mum was a witch sometimes, but that’s not what she meant.”

“I imagine she would know almost nothing about it. And both I and the people who put you here overestimated her desire to know more about magic.”

“Stop talking about who _put_ me here. I know my uncle and aunt had to take me in because they were my only living relatives. And I came here after my parents died in a car crash. That’s the way it is.”

“Ah, I see. You are fighting so hard against what I am saying because that is the best way to protect yourself from getting false hope up.”

Harry clenched his hands very hard behind his folded arms. But he didn’t let his expression change. Say that Riddle did understand some of what it was like. Say he had even come to invite Harry to a special kind of school. It wouldn’t matter, in the end. The Dursleys would never pay for something like that, and if Riddle had targeted him because he thought Harry’s family was rich, he’d be disappointed.

“Have strange things never happened around you?” Riddle continued in a quieter voice still. “You might have moved things without touching them, or forced animals to obey you, or altered the color of someone’s hair or clothes—”

“How did _you_ hear about that?” Harry took a long step back. Now he was wondering if Riddle was from a hospital instead of a school.

“Ah, yes. That’s a common manifestation of accidental magic.” Riddle stood slowly. “Listen, child. This is a wand. I’m going to hand it to you, and I want you to tell me what you feel.” He held out the white stick that he’d used to make the gesture earlier.

Harry took it slowly. And nearly dropped it. It wasn’t the weight of it, which wasn’t so heavy even though he wasn’t used to it. It was the thrumming warmth that struck up his arm towards his heart.

“What do you feel?” Riddle prompted.

Harry glared at him. “Wood.”

*

_This one is going to be difficult._

Tom had to admit he was relieved, though. He had arrived just in time. Whoever had left Potter here—probably Malfoy, knowing him—had chosen the Muggle guardians well. Another month, and Potter might have been primed to leave the Muggle world behind entirely, believe the wizards who would tell him that he was dirty because of his Muggleborn mother but he could make up for it, and embrace the pureblood prejudices without looking back.

It was a common tactic of the purebloods, at least with half-blood orphans: abandon them in the Muggle world and then swoop in to the “rescue.” Tell them that the harder they worked, the more they attempted to embrace the pureblood nonsense, the closer they would come to achieving the “ideal” of someone raised in the magical world. The half-bloods usually swallowed it whole. There was no fanatic like a convert.

And those half-bloods married purebloods and reared their children in the same way and went around cringing and apologizing for their power, thinking it a fluke.

 _Rather than their rightful inheritance,_ Tom thought, and smiled at Potter. “More than that, I think, Mr. Potter, from the way you nearly dropped it.”

Potter snorted. “If magic is real, then fine. I wish for you to go away.” He brandished the wand at Tom.

A fast flow of magic seized Tom around the middle and bore him back against the couch on the other side of the room. Tom went with it, he was so startled. He found himself in a sitting position before he could blink.

Across the room, Potter dropped his wand as if it was on fire and backed away from it, his eyes wide and his breathing unsteady.

Tom cleared his throat and adjusted the hang of his suit. He had to admit, he hadn’t expected that, but it might have done more good than hours of argument. Potter was trembling like a rabbit and staring at the wand, but when he lifted his eyes to Tom’s, they burned with the kind of excitement that Tom remembered seeing in himself.

Of course, Tom had expected him to be powerful, but there was the fact that he had achieved that kind of result with _Tom’s_ wand…

 _Later,_ Tom told himself, and raised his eyebrows at Potter. “Beginning to believe me now?”

Potter nodded to the wand. “You pick it up and do some magic. You could have pretended to go along with going away because you knew I didn’t believe you.”

Tom clucked his tongue as he walked forwards and picked up his wand, and ignored the spark of gladness that leaped through him at having it reunited with him. “You are indeed, suspicious, aren’t you, Mr. Potter?”

“Oh, yeah, everyone tells me that all the time.”

Tom raised curious brows before he realized what Potter likely meant. From the mulish look on the boy’s face, his relatives, and other people, had probably spread tales about him being a criminal or involved in adjacent activities.

Tom simply nodded and said, “Well, then I will perform a bit of magic I don’t think you can take as a joke.” He pointed his wand at the low table in the middle of the drawing room and wordlessly Transfigured it into a lion.

Potter’s eyes were as wide as the lion’s when Tom glanced at him. Tom studied him for a second, and said quietly, “I did not Transfigure it to eat you.”

Potter nodded, then glanced away, his jaw hard as glass. Tom knew that perhaps it was unnerving for Potter to have Tom anticipate his responses so well, but this boy was much like Tom had once been, despite living with his blood family.

And there was the matter of his ability to perform a powerful Banishment Charm with Tom’s wand.

Again, though, that would have to wait. Tom Transfigured the lion back into a table despite his temptation to let it claw at the Dursleys’ furniture. “And so you believe me now when I say that you’ve been invited to a magical school, Mr. Potter?”

“But why? It’s not like my marks are the best.”

“All magical children receive training in a magical school,” Tom said patiently. “However, there are two for Britain. Hogwarts, which is the school your parents attended, and Fortius Academy, my school, which I hope you’ll attend.”

“Let’s pretend for a second that I have the money to do either. Why should I go to yours?”

Tom blinked again, then sighed. It was his own fault for forgetting how little Potter knew. “Let us sit down, Harry. Please,” he added, when he saw the way the young man stared at him.

After a grudging moment, Harry nodded and did as he asked, perching on the edge of a chair as if he didn’t get to sit there very often. Intense green eyes watched Tom from beneath a mop of shaggy black hair that would have marked him as a Potter to any magical person with eyes. In fact, Tom would be surprised if Lucius didn’t have spies watching the house.

Not that there had been any today, but they might still come by on a regular basis.

“You know nothing of the truth about how your parents died,” Tom checked.

“No. It wasn’t a car crash.”

The boy was trying to sound firm, but his voice wavered. Tom shook his head anyway. “No,” he said. “It wasn’t. There is a certain amount of prejudice in our world, Harry—”

“What a surprise.”

Tom found himself appreciating the boy’s sense of humor, but he did raise his eyebrows this time, and Harry subsided. “Thank you. Now, we call non-magical people like your relatives _Muggles._ I’m sure you’ve discovered throughout your ten years in this world that some people are polite, some discourteous, some treat you roughly and some kindly.”

“Not much of that last,” Harry muttered, but he nodded.

“Well, there are magical people who can have Muggle parents. The causes of that are disputed, but it happens on a regular basis. They are called _Muggleborns_ in our world. When they enter that world, they face people who grew up there, and some of those people hate them for coming from outside the magical world.”

Harry nodded. “And my mum—she must have been Muggleborn, right? If I’m really related to the Dursleys.”

A note of doubt had crept into his voice. Tom did his best to smile reassuringly. “You are. Don’t doubt that.”

“Wish I could.” Harry folded his arms and looked unhappy.

“Your relatives cannot prevent you from going to a magical school, and they lied about your parents’ deaths,” Tom continued. He would have to address Harry’s resentment towards Muggles at some point, but it didn’t have to be right now. “Your father, James Potter, was what is called a _pureblood,_ a magical person born from a long magical lineage.”

“And one of the people who are usually prejudiced gits?”

“The prejudice was not as bad in his time as it is now,” Tom said. “At least, when he attended Hogwarts. He and your mother fell in love. They married, and had you. But there were people who had tried to persuade your father to marry a pureblood instead, and people who resented your mother for rejecting—let us say, offers they’d made her. Still others who resented her for being more brilliant and more magically powerful than several purebloods combined, which undermined the lies they were trying to spread about only purebloods having powerful magic.

“I am sorry, Harry, but your parents were murdered for loving and marrying each other, for having a half-blood child. They were brought down in a magical rite referred to as a Sacred Hunt.” Tom hesitated, but the wideness of Harry’s eyes urged him on. “A literal hunt, in which the magic of the victims is harvested for the benefit of the killers. They were butchered like deer.”

 _Perhaps I didn’t have to that blunt,_ Tom thought, as he watched Harry make a wounded noise and bend over as if someone had punched him in the chest. Tom hesitated, then stood up and walked over to put a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“Did they go to prison?” Harry whispered. “The ones who did this?”

Tom shook his head. “I’m sorry, but they didn’t. It was known to the people who found the remains afterwards what had happened, but there was supposedly no sign of the criminals, and the Sacred Hunt isn’t technically illegal as long as at least one of the victims is Muggleborn.”

Harry said nothing for long seconds. Tom chided himself again for saying it like that. He did believe that Harry deserved the truth, and most of the other professors he had sent would have softened it too much, but there had to be a middle path—

Then Harry snapped his head up. “I hate them,” he said.

“The ones who murdered your parents?”

Harry nodded, his eyes fierce and burning harder now than when he’d talked about the Muggles he lived with. “And purebloods. I want them to _suffer._ I want to take everything away from them and _laugh_ about it.” He gripped his knees as if they were wands and then asked abruptly, “How did I survive?”

“Your mother created a sacrificial magical protection that depended on her being—killed in exactly the way it happened,” Tom said. “Two of your parents’ friends found you under that ward after the Hunt was done. The killers had departed, but probably intended to come back for you later.” He hesitated again.

“Tell me, Riddle. Tell me _everything._ ”

Tom nodded. There might have been a chance of a middle path, but now he had to live with the decision he’d made. “You don’t have to worry about your parents’ killers not suffering, or getting away with what they did. Your parents’ friends delivered you to someone whom they thought would protect you, and then they tracked down the killers and slaughtered them.”

Harry’s mouth dropped open a little. Then he said, “Who—who was the person they gave me to? And what happened to my parents’ friends? Who were they? Where are they now?”

“The person they gave you to was Albus Dumbledore, then then-Headmaster of Hogwarts,” Tom said quietly. “He, unfortunately, was a reformer who thought that a civil war would be the worst of all possible outcomes, and tried to pacify the purebloods as much as possible. It’s one reason that Hogwarts is now overrun with their lies, although Dumbledore is no longer in the Headmaster’s position. He saw you as an innocent victim—which you were, of course—and also as a possible means of reconciliation between the two sides, if the scale was, ah, _balanced_ by your parents’ deaths and then the deaths of their killers. He publicized what had happened, and then he delivered you to the Minister for Magic.”

“I don’t have any Potter relatives?”

Tom shook his head. “Not in the immediate family, and once you were in the Minister’s hands, he successfully kept you away from some of the people who might have been able to claim you on the basis of more distant kinship. Besides, well, your guardian was to have been one of your parents’ friends, and he—was unavailable.”

“They’re dead, aren’t they? For what they did.”

“Actually, no,” Tom said, and was pleased with the nature of his news, despite the awfulness of it, when Harry’s eyes lit up again. “The man who was supposed to have become your guardian, Sirius Black, is a pureblood, albeit one who had rejected everything his family taught him. By their own laws, they were forbidden to imprison him or kill him. They ordered his house arrest, however, and so he hasn’t been seen in public for ten years. The chance that he will be able to leave or escape is extremely unlikely.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. “And the other one?”

“His name is Remus Lupin. A half-blood, so, yes, they would have killed him. But he—well, werewolves are real in our world, Harry. Three nights after your parents’ deaths was a full moon. Lupin transformed and unleashed himself on the purebloods. He had never done anything like that before, from the information I was able to gather. He had been too afraid to do so, one of the rare werewolves who didn’t grow up around others of their kind and thus tried to reject instead of embrace the wolf. But he came out of that night having embraced it. That was clear enough in his eyes when the photographs of him taken after that slaughter came out.”

“They captured him? Then why is he free?”

Tom shook his head. “He showed himself long enough to promise that if harm came to you or Black, he would find a way to bite a child from every pureblood family in Britain. They believed him. It’s a rare werewolf who’s been trained as a wizard, and because of his magic, once he embraced the wolf, he could transform at any time, not just the full moon. He made himself into the demon of their worst nightmares. So the Minister for Magic brought you here, and told people you were being raised by blood kin. Which,” Tom drawled, “is _technically_ true.”

Harry sat still for long moments. Then he asked, “Where is Lupin now?”

“Abroad,” Tom said. “At least, I think so. I know they haven’t captured him, despite years of searching, and I believe they would have if he was still in Britain. And if he had been in the country, he probably would have known that you were being abused here.”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. Tom watched him, his understanding of Harry’s struggle aching in him. Harry wanted to deny being abused, but at the same time, he thought doing so would convince Tom to leave him here.

“I want to go to your school,” Harry finally said, in a small voice. “But I still don’t know how I’m going to afford it.”

“The Potters had money, like many pureblood families,” Tom said gently. “You’re the last member of that lineage, Harry. You can use that money to pay for any school you want. I’ll take you to Diagon Alley myself.”

“Diagon Alley?”

“The primary wizarding district of shops and the like. In London.”

Harry bit his lip and nodded. Then he said, “Does it—I mean, I feel better knowing that—” He looked at the floor. “I still want to punish people. Does that make me a bad person?”

“No,” Tom said. “Believe me, Harry, I understand _exactly_ what you are talking about.”

Harry looked up at him, and his eyes had changed again. There was a look in them that made Tom suspect he was seeing the boy who had pitted himself against his relatives to survive their abuse, to deal with it.

“That’s part of the purpose of your school, isn’t it?” Harry whispered. “So we can punish the bad people?”

“It is,” Tom said. “But I must emphasize, Harry, that I get along by pretending to accept magically weak students and students no one cares about. They would care about you if they knew I was here. You must not show your magical strength in public, outside the grounds of the school.”

Harry nodded, but he looked worried now. “If they would care about you visiting me, then how are we going to keep them away after you leave?”

 _We_. Tom savored the word, and held out his hand.

“I never intended to leave you here,” he said. “Mr. Potter, would you consent to a kidnapping to the grounds of Fortius Academy?”

Harry laughed, a sound that Tom suspected he had made all too seldom in his life, and took Tom’s hand.

 _Yes,_ Tom exulted privately.


	3. The First Taste of Joy

“I grant you indulgences, Severus, but I cannot tolerate failure.”

Lucius watched with distant amusement as Severus Snape bowed his head in front of him. There had been a time when the man had thought himself as good as any pureblood. And he _did_ have power, enough to be an asset.

But he had nothing else—no bloodlines, or wealth, or beauty—and he had been devoted to that Mudblood who had married Potter. Lucius had briefly thought that Severus might try to get “revenge” on the people who had killed her in the Sacred Hunt, but then Black and Lupin had slaughtered them, taking Severus’s vengeance away from him. He had said, when Lucius had asked him, that his focus had now switched to Lupin and Black, that he hated them for completing the slaughter that should have been his. And Lucius, a powerful Legilimens, had detected no lies.

 _As if I would have allowed a half-blood to kill purebloods._ But it was useful to let Severus believe the fiction.

And it made it natural to put Severus to work on the potion that would eventually poison werewolves through the air that breathed. That he had not succeeded was of no importance. It kept a leash on a potentially dangerous man and let Lucius attend to other matters.

“I will try to do better, sir,” Severus murmured.

“See that you do.” Lucius sat back and stretched a little. The Minister’s _position_ suited him just fine, but the chair was confining at moments. He had kept it, however, because it was an important continuity link between the past and the present, as the magical world adjusted to purebloods’ dominion. “Dismissed for the day. Return to Hogwarts and prepare for the upcoming school year. Draco will be attending this year, you know, and I expect him to be under your special protection.”

“Of course.” Severus smiled. Well, Lucius found it difficult not to smile at the thought of his son, too. “Thank you, sir.” He turned and left without another word.

 _At least Severus is efficient._ Lucius wished he could say that for half of the purebloods who surrounded him.

Then again, purebloods were not meant to be servitors. The Ministry was still working to achieve the delicate balance needed between allowing _some_ half-bloods into the magical world, as well as those whose status was more ambiguous, like the children of half-bloods and Mudbloods, or those who didn’t have the good sense to hide their creature lineage, and the need to keep them in their place.

Truly, Lucius didn’t expect to see the end of that work, unless his idle preparations for immortality worked out. Perhaps in his son’s lifetime.

He left his office and moved down the corridor, acknowledging the nods, bows, and kneeling of those he passed, according to their blood status. Useful customs, bowing and kneeling. They signaled everyone’s awareness of proper subservience while also preserving useful lives so that Lucius did not have to duel or execute someone on the spot.

 _Good thing, that._ Lucius found dueling dreadfully boring. He always knew the outcome.

When he reached the private lift that would take him directly to the Department of Mysteries, he then had to wait while the Aurors inspected it. Lucius held back his yawn without difficulty. Yes, it bored him, but there had been an assassination attempt last week, and that always made the poor dears so anxious.

As he got into the lift, Lucius remembered something else, and glanced to the left. Yes, the blood left from the assassin’s decapitation had been cleaned.

When he arrived in the Department of Mysteries, Lachesis Burke, Head Unspeakable, was waiting for him. She was a calm, tall woman with eyes that flickered and turned slowly through many colors, a side-effect of an enchantment gone wrong that she’d been caught in a decade ago. Since the other side-effects of that blast were extraordinarily useful, Lucius had refused all the calls to have her dismissed.

“Minister,” she said, with a deep nod.

“Burke.” Lucius fell in step beside her as they proceeded down the sleek black corridor into the Department of Mysteries. “You haven’t found the Potter child, then.”

“No, sir. I’m sorry.”

Burke spoke the words without any variation in her breathing or tone, as usual, but that was part of the price he paid to have as complete control of her as he did. Lucius shrugged. “You will keep searching.”

“Yes, sir.”

The corridor bent sharply in front of them and then deposited them into a large, circular space fringed with blue instead of black stone, the way the rest of the Department of Mysteries was. Lucius considered the large hovering black artifact in front of him. It was egg-shaped, but the skin, if one touched it, was cool, and the leathery texture of a dragon’s egg instead of a bird’s. And so far, the Department of Mysteries had not figured out how to open it.

“A demonstration, Burke?”

“Yes, sir.” Burke stepped away to the side and spoke softly to one of the hooded Unspeakables waiting for them, who nodded and departed the room. Lucius passed the time until the return of the man and the resumption of the demonstration by considering the swirl of silver power holding the device up. That swirl traveled with the artifact when it was moved. Nothing they had found could disrupt it, just as nothing could damage the skin of the egg.

They need not be able to understand it completely, however, to use it.

The Unspeakable came back into the room with the Muggle prisoner a few minutes later. The blank eyes and the steady walk spoke of the Imperius Curse. Lucius nodded, and the Unspeakable pointed their wand and spoke a _Finite._

The man’s calm dissolved immediately, and he began to scream. Burke turned and floated him into position next to the egg.

Lucius, as always when he was this close to a Muggle, studied the prisoner’s ragged beard and the heaviness of the jaw, and nodded. Yes, once one began to look for it, the signs were undeniable. These _creatures_ were not even the same species as wizards. Less refined. Closer to the ape.

His researchers were still working to crack the secret of Mudbloods. Did they steal magic in the womb from pureblood children, who were then born as Squibs? Did their parents perform some sort of ritual accidentally? Did the shared common ancestor that purebloods and Muggles must have had millions of years in the past occasionally manifest in a throwback?

They were serious academic questions, and Lucius _did_ hope that he lived to see them resolved.

The Unspeakable who had brought the prisoner stepped back out of the way, and Burke cast a simple Blasting Curse at the egg.

The swirl of silver power beneath it darkened, and the darkness coursed up into the egg, although the egg’s skin was so black that the disturbance was visible only as a ripple traveling across a still pond would be. Then the egg sparkled, crackled, and snapped a silent, invisible charge of power at the floating, screaming Muggle.

The Unspeakables didn’t need to step back because they were already in position for the sprayed blood to miss them. Lucius wiped a drop of it off his cheek and sighed with annoyance.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

Lucius shook his head. “It’s my fault, Madam Burke. I should have stood further back.” He studied the charred body of the Muggle, now only a collection of blackened bones that might have excited no notice if they were found next to a campfire. No, again the egg had been too quick. He had missed the moment when the floating essence of the Muggle, the distilled dirt that distinguished them from purebloods and other humans, had been removed from the body.

“Continue your experiments,” he told Burke. “The egg will be useful if we can but harness its power more reliably.”

“Yes, sir.”

She accompanied him back to the lift, and Lucius traveled up by himself, silently pondering as he went. The disappearance of the Potter child from his Muggle relatives’ home didn’t greatly concern him, but it _was_ annoying. If someone had taken the boy to harvest him, then Lucius should have been told. If he had wandered away, he should have been easily found.

Lucius suspected magic was involved, but there were few purebloods who would act against his orders, and no half-bloods powerful enough—either magically or socially—to do so. And Mudbloods didn’t even muster a resistance. They were taught the absolute basics they needed to be, at either Hogwarts or the so-called Fortius Academy, and then expelled back into the Muggle world.

Lucius sighed. It was probably a sign that Remus Lupin had returned to Britain, and that meant that he would have to urge Severus to proceed faster in his work on the werewolf poison. Genius couldn’t be rushed, but Severus’s was clouded by the chaotic emotions and dirty blood that had come from his Muggle father. The man would have to find some way to make it work.

The lift opened, and Lucius stepped out and smiled at his wife. “Ready for lunch, dear?”

“Yes. I think we could try that little place in Classic Alley, the Crystal Swan?” Smiling, Narcissa linked her arm with his. “I heard that they have a ward that can reliably distinguish purebloods from Mudbloods, and which mutes half-bloods when they pass through it, so we shouldn’t be troubled.”

Laughing, Lucius kissed his wife. It had proven annoyingly difficult to separate the categories of wizards and witches based on blood, even though Lucius _knew_ their blood was different. Apparently the magic needed to bind to small particles which they hadn’t yet discovered through their research.

“The Crystal Swan sounds wonderful, dear. Lead on.”

*

Severus Snape moved through Diagon Alley, his steps long and his head slightly bowed. It was the best way for a half-blood to move around pureblood-controlled areas, he’d found, as if he was apologizing for existence.

And it worked. So many gazes slid straight past the bowed head and, where it was required, the flare of the green aura around him that marked his blood status, that they never noticed the hatred and the rage burning in his eyes.

Yes, Black and Lupin had been foolish, and Severus would have let Black fall into a pit if one had opened at his feet with the man dangling over it while clinging to a branch. But he hated the pureblood society that had slaughtered Lily more.

It had begun to smother her spirit when they were still students at Hogwarts. Severus had seen it long before that moment in fifth year when he had foolishly thought that repudiating her friendship would grant him higher status in Slytherin House. Lily’s laughter had faltered, her smiles had slowed, and she had begun to keep her opinions to herself more and more, refusing even to answer questions in class. That was utterly unlike the Lily he knew.

Perhaps her falling in love with Potter shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to Severus. After all, Potter was a man who had openly and arrogantly set himself against the pureblood supremacists. He was someone who could be counted on to shelter a Muggleborn, to hold out a hand to her that might be condescending but wouldn’t be deadly.

Severus paused to dodge a pack of children who were already learning to own the streets.

And Potter had been proclaiming his love for Lily for years, of course. That it had turned out to be true was not the most surprising thing in Severus’s life.

Severus let one hand rest for a moment against the front of his robes, and then took it away. His experimental draught rested there, the one he spent far more time working on than the anti-werewolf potion, and he sometimes dreamed of taking it out and unleashing it in the middle of the alley or some other crowded magical enclave.

 _Then_ they would scream, the entitled purebloods.

But he forced himself to pull his hand away from it. In the days when he had been foolish enough to believe propaganda that claimed there were differences between the types of magical blood, he had tried to create a potion that would attune itself to pure blood alone. But he knew now that one could not distinguish the blood of a pureblood from a Muggleborn, or, often, their magic. So he had created a potion that would home in on certain patterns of thought.

But there was still too much chance that he would release it in public and accidentally catch some half-bloods and Muggleborns who had been convinced to accept the purebloods’ beliefs about them.

So. He would wait.

He turned the corner to proceed to the Apparition point, and found himself rocking to a stop. An older man in a neat suit was walking past him, but although he was dressed as a Muggle, that wasn’t so unusual. Muggle parents were still allowed in Diagon Alley, a convenient center point to place spells within their minds that would keep them charmed and compliant no matter what happened to their children.

No, it was the green-eyed boy at his side who had caught Severus’s attention.

Severus would know those eyes if he only saw them for a moment on a crowded train. He found himself slowing down, but the man in the neat Muggle suit turned his head a little. Severus restrained himself to a look of contempt such as the man and boy would probably be well-used to receiving, and turned on his heel.

But inside his head, the drumbeat of his heart played an awful syncopation.

He stopped as if compelled to examine the inferior wares in the window of Dashing’s Apothecary and watched out of the corner of his eye as the man and the boy stepped into Ollivander’s. Damn it. Severus couldn’t muster an excuse to linger long enough in the Alley for the length of time it would take them to come back out. There were telltales here who would carry the word to Lucius if he did, and Severus could not afford to draw attention.

But if the boy, _Lily’s son,_ had come from the Muggle world…

That suggested that Lucius had placed him with his Muggle relatives, indeed, as Severus had suspected but not dared to ask about.

The man with him could not be Petunia’s husband. Not enough glaring and stomping and muttering about “freaks.”

Severus still had contacts, and people who owed him favors, and those who would not have lived but for his skill in Potions. He would make sure that Lily’s son was not suffering under the hand of whoever this was.

*

“Wow!”

The word burst out of Harry despite how childish he knew it made him sound. He turned bright red a minute later, but Riddle only chuckled, and so did the strange man who came out of the back of the shop.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Potter, a pleasure to see you.” The man drew out a measuring tape and wrapped it around the air, and it flew over and began to measure Harry on its own. “And Mr. Riddle, I remember you. Thirteen inches. Yew.” He opened his mouth as if to say more, but the heavy look from Riddle made him shut it.

 _Strange,_ Harry thought as he blinked when the tape flew past his nose. _He’s the Headmaster at a school that’s pretty despised. I wonder why Mr. Ollivander gives him respect enough to shut up when Riddle just looks at him?_

It was something that Harry had to keep to himself for now, even as the tape snapped itself shut and flew back to Ollivander, but he resolved to remember it. Now that he was away from the Dursleys, in the middle of a world that had killed his parents, he had to be alert every second, and he was the only one he would ultimately trust to protect himself. Trust in Riddle was a long way away.

Even if Harry _had_ let Riddle kidnap him, that was more about how awful it was at Number Four than because he trusted the man.

“I think, Mr. Potter,” Ollivander chattered as he reached for a box and took a wand out, “we’ll have a search to find one for you. Now, try this—beechwood, heartstring from a dragon—”

Harry started to reach out for it, but Riddle shifted, and both Harry and Ollivander glanced at him and blinked. For some reason, Riddle’s face was shuttered.

“No,” he said. “He’ll need whichever one you made that has a phoenix feather the most similar to mine, Garrick.”

“He hasn’t even tried _one_ yet,” Ollivander began, sounding as annoyed as Aunt Petunia did when Harry asked for food. “How can you know—”

“He used my wand effortlessly,” Riddle said. “It’s likely that we’ll have brother wands, and you know it. That’s why I brought him here instead of to the shops where the other Muggleborns and half-bloods who attend my school get their wands. Come on, Garrick. Fetch it, wherever it is.”

Harry found himself grinning in a silly way as Ollivander went into the back of the shop. Riddle glanced at him. “I suppose you think I’m high-handed now, but I am only trying to save time. You’ll find out that it’s something I value.”

There was a warning in his tone, but Harry shook his head. “It’s just, this is the first time I can remember that someone was _happy_ about sharing something with me. Aunt Petunia gets so upset whenever someone reminds her that I’m her nephew.”

Riddle stared at him hard, but didn’t say anything before Ollivander came back with another box. When he opened it, Harry caught his breath. This time, he wasn’t going to deny the magic. There really _was_ a warm thrum coming from the wand, and it reached towards him and surrounded him.

The wand was actually bouncing up and down in the box like an eager child. Harry didn’t recognize the wood, but he didn’t care, at the moment. He reached out and scooped the wand up, and the warmth hit his hand.

Harry closed his eyes. Yes, this was _his_ wand.

“Holly and phoenix feather,” Ollivander was saying, in what sounded like a happy voice. “Unusual combination, never thought I would find—well, Mr. Potter, give it a wave!”

Harry started and popped his eyes open. He was surprised that the others couldn’t sense it, but apparently they really couldn’t.

He thought about flinging Ollivander across the wand shop, just because it would echo what he’d done to Riddle, but the man had done nothing to him, and it seemed silly to have his first two demonstrations of magic be the _same._ Instead, Harry focused on the boxes around him and said, “ _Fly_!” as he gave his wand a sharp swish.

The wand boxes all leaped off the shelves, and the ones that Ollivander had already brought out leaped off his counter. Harry laughed as they danced all around the shop, dipping up and down as if they were supported by invisible wings. He spun in circles, and the boxes echoed him, their spirals getting tighter until they settled back where they’d been.

He turned back to Ollivander and took some pleasure in how open-mouthed he was. Then he nodded and began to talk about Harry’s parents, and how skilled they’d been at Charms and Transfiguration. Harry nodded, and listened.

But he had to admit that more than half of his attention was on Riddle, and the man’s fierce grin.

It really was a change, to have an adult be proud of him.

But a nice one.

*

“And this is the wand shop that we’re supposed to go to? It’s just, in the books I read they only talked about Ollivander’s…”

“I know,” said Professor Johnson, putting a hand on Hermione’s shoulder for a second. “But Muggleborns aren’t allowed in Ollivander’s shop anymore, and half-bloods only on sufferance. It’s best that we come here.”

Hermione bit her lip and felt a hot surge of defiance in the center of her chest. “But Headmaster Riddle is working to change that, right?”

“Yes, he is,” said Professor Johnson, and smiled fiercely at her as they entered the nameless little shop off the street in Paris that Professor Johnson had Apparated them to. (Hermione had been dismayed to find out that she _hated_ Apparition). “And I am. You are. We’re all part of that.”

Hermione wasn’t sure she was part of that when she wasn’t even a first-year student yet, but she kept silent. It wasn’t hard to do that when she was in Professor Nora Johnson’s company. She was as tall as Professor Riddle and as imposing, her skin a few shades darker than Hermione’s own, her dark hair meticulously braided and bound around her head, so that she was wearing what looked like a crown. Even after she had told Hermione a little about herself—how she’d been the only one with magic in her family until her little cousin Angelina had flown a teakettle over to herself when she had a broken leg, for example—Hermione was still a bit shy around her.

“Professor Johnson, welcome.” The voice came out of the shadows at the back of the shop, and a white woman stepped out who wore shimmering silver robes and had silver hair that cascaded around her shoulders and down her back. Hermione blinked. She thought the hair actually trailed off into the darkness like a wedding dress’s train. “And a new student. What is your name, young blood?”

 _Well, that’s unnerving,_ Hermione thought, but she managed to meet the woman’s electric blue eyes and say, “Um, Hermione Granger. Um, madam.”

“Hermione, young blood,” said the woman, and nodded several times, and then reached behind her and came out with huge, long wooden boxes in her hands which seemed far heavier than she should have been able to hold. But she lifted them without difficulty and put them down on the long white counter that curved through half the shop. “You will tell me which of these feels stronger to you.”

“How do I do that?” Hermione hated feeling so lost. She glanced at Professor Johnson.

“Pass your hand over them,” the professor murmured. “You’ll feel a tug towards one or the other.”

Still a little unnerved, Hermione stepped close to the strange woman and extended her hand. Nothing happened for long enough that she started to worry. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to attend a magical school after all.

But then her hand jerked sharply to the left, and the woman nodded and slid the right-hand box back into the shadows with a long shove. Hermione listened, but there was no clatter of the thing falling to the ground. Instead, the woman turned the left box around and touched her hand to the top.

A series of white stars blossomed down the top of it like scars in the wood. “Again,” the woman said.

Hermione swung her hand back and forth, and this time it was faster. Her wrist _oscillated_ towards a star about two-thirds of the way up the box. The woman nodded and made that one vanish, and the stars rearranged themselves, coming closer together now.

“Again.”

And Hermione did it again, and again, and each time, the space between the stars shrank. And at last her hand drifted down gently onto a star near the middle of the box, and the woman closed her eyes and sighed.

“Ah, this wand has been looking for a match, long and long,” the woman whispered, swaying back and forth in what was almost like a dance in place. “It will be happy, and you will be happy, and the air shall rejoice…”

This was all a little mystical for Hermione, who looked at Professor Johnson uncertainly But the professor appeared calm, so Hermione tried to be the same way. Besides, her books _had_ seemed as if stranger things happened all the time in the magical world.

The woman held out her hands, and a wand formed in the air right over them. It was as if the shadows and light from the woman’s silver hair spun themselves together and made a cocoon, and then the cocoon split and there was a wand there. The wood was shiny enough that Hermione blinked, and Professor Johnson made a soft sound behind her.

“What is it?” Hermione asked, even as she reached towards the wand. It pulled her hand more powerfully than any of the boxes or stars had.

“It’s yew, that’s all,” Professor Johnson said. “The same wood that Professor Riddle’s wand is made of. It’s not common.”

Hermione had a conflicted moment to feel pleasure at that, and then the wand touched her palm.

Air whistled around her, and Hermione found herself plunged into a memory of a hot day when her parents had taken her to London and they’d been walking for what felt like _miles_ , and then stepped into the cool of a shop to get an ice. This was the same feeling, cold like a blessing, like a fever breaking. Hermione waved the wand, the way it was whispering at her it wanted to be waved.

The air quivered and split, and a pink light like the kind that used to shine from a lamp Hermione had had as a little girl came forth. Hermione beamed, and the woman crooned, and Professor Johnson clapped her hands.

“Feather of an Abraxan in the core,” said the woman. “Handle it well, young blood. Use it wisely.” She paused. “Seventeen of your Sickles.”

Hermione blinked. “I thought the gold coins were called Galleons?”

“I only accept silver,” said the woman, in the kind of tone that Hermione knew not to question.

She nodded and got a handful of the silver coins out that Professor Johnson had helped her exchange when they first landed in Paris. Her hands were shaking so hard with excitement that it was hard to measure out the correct amount at first.

It was really happening. _She was really a witch._

*

There was no warning, no tremble of the wards or the innumerable protective spells that Severus had set up around his quarters. He simply turned and there was a man behind him, standing with his back to the door that led into Severus’s bedroom.

Severus’s wand leaped into his hand. The man raised an eyebrow and…

Dropped his shields.

The surge of magical power through the air drove Severus to his knees, as he would have fallen if confronted by a mighty wave. And that wave was hanging over him now, ready to crush him more than drown him. Severus knew that, and he fought to hide his expression, his fear. He would have preferred to die on his feet, and with purebloods screaming in front of him for preference, but he had had little enough to live for since Lily’s death.

The wave didn’t fall. Severus finally dared to look up and saw the man step away from the door.

And although he didn’t wear the Muggle suit now, Severus recognized him as the man he had seen in the alley earlier that day with Lily’s boy.

“How…” he breathed.

“Professor Severus Snape.” The man nodded to him. “I never approached you before now because I doubted, despite your power, that you would be an asset. Your private grief seemed to wrap you away from everything except the _willing_ service you gave our beloved Minister.”

“ _Beloved_ ,” Severus said, and the man smiled.

“My name is Headmaster Thomas Riddle,” he said, and of course Severus had heard of him. He simply couldn’t remember ever seeing him. And he had had no idea that this power could lurk inside anyone, no matter what their blood status. “Now, however, I have little choice but to take you into my service, given that you saw my newest student today.”

“You want me to teach at Fortius?”

“No. I want you to stay in your place, and feed _me_ information instead of Malfoy. Pass to him the information I request that you pass. Teach the half-bloods who come through these halls to conceal their power and their pride, if you can, since some purebloods will still believe they are strong in the way they will not believe it of Muggleborns, and keep the secret of Harry Potter’s attendance at Fortius. In return, I will be pleased to let you participate in my vengeance in any fashion you wish.”

“You are going to…” Severus felt his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth in the way no curse could have plastered it. Riddle only watched him with dark eyes. Severus had to be the one to unstick his tongue and say, “You are going to bring about a revolution.”

“Yes.” Riddle gestured lazily, and an image of the wave that Severus had been envisioning appeared, towering over them both. Severus felt the dark power thrumming in it, and he knew he didn’t imagine it when Riddle’s eyes flashed red. “You pictured it as a wave? Most people do.”

“Those who know about it,” Severus dared to whisper.

“True enough. The purebloods don’t.” Riddle leaned towards him. “I will annihilate you if you betray me.”

“I will swear whatever oath you desire,” Severus said at once. He hadn’t been this impulsive since Lily’s death, but the thrum under his breastbone, like the touch of a hand on a new wand, promised to make up for _everything._ “As long as I know that you are going to crush _them_ instead.”

Riddle flashed him a smile as dark and low as his voice. “It will be their tsunami.”

And when the power retreated enough that he could reach for his wand to cast his loyalty oath, Severus knew that no student who had claimed their wand that day, not even Harry Potter, could be more joyful than he was.

To _ruin_ them.

It was all he desired.


	4. Fortius Academy

“I know you could have Apparated us, sir,” Harry shouted into Riddle’s robes as they soared over the walls of Fortius on the back of an apparently invisible demon winged horse. “Why did you decide to have us ride the thestral instead?”

“I wanted you to absorb the sight of Fortius from the air. Look down. If you are not too afraid, of course.”

After that, Harry would have looked down even if he _was_ afraid, but he truly wasn’t. Being in the air on the back of something just felt _natural_ to him. He wasn’t sure if he would have felt the same way if he’d ever ridden in an aeroplane, but at this point, that didn’t matter.

He looked down.

A heavy stone wall was passing beneath them, and so were the gates in that wall, which looked as if they were made of iron braided together. Harry would have thought they and the wall were just decorative, but when he really concentrated, he could see the subtle golden glow that ran around them and bound them together.

“What happens if someone hits that glow on the wall?” he yelled at Riddle.

Riddle chuckled in a way that promised absolutely no good for anybody who did that, and gestured ahead. Harry supposed that was an answer of sorts, and looked.

Before him sprawled what had looked like a blank landscape before they crossed the wall. Harry supposed that made sense. You wouldn’t want to have Muggles in balloons or something getting a glimpse of this place that had preserved space, incredibly, within the city of London.

There was a long path that might be made of glowing white stone which ran up the center of grassy grounds. It split off into lots of other paths, too, which led to various buildings of stone, brick, and more glowing white stuff that Harry supposed might be marble (not like he’d ever seen it before). Water was everywhere, too, gliding alongside the central path and the side paths and sitting around in pools. It looked cool and marvelous. Harry wondered if they taught you how to swim at Fortius. He hoped so.

There were all kinds of buildings: what looked like a garage for cars but probably wasn’t, a wide-open one with pillars that the wind could blow through and flat roofs, greenhouses, small sheds, one like a small castle that Harry wondered if people slept in, slender towers, blocky towers, and a huge round one that towered over everything else. Harry thought it should be in the center, but instead, it was on a hill to the left side of almost everything.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I can’t see where you’re pointing, Harry,” said Riddle’s pleasant voice. “Describe it.”

Harry scowled. This was already becoming a _thing._ Riddle wanted him to describe things, and speak in complete sentences, and all this other nonsense. Besides, if Riddle knew he was pointing, he could probably tell the direction Harry was pointing, too.

“The big thing that looks like a church.”

“Nothing here has a steeple.”

Harry sighed as the thestral slanted over to the side and the big domed building came closer. “I _mean_ , it looks like churches I saw on the telly sometimes. It has a huge round dome and it’s not reflecting the sun the way those do but those were made of gold, I think, and it has what look like giant doors on the side—”

“Take a breath, Harry.”

“You said I should speak in complete sentences.”

“I did not mean run-ons.”

“What does that even _mean_?”

Riddle laughed at him. Harry scowled some more. Riddle’s laughter didn’t _feel_ the way that the laughter of other children in his primary school had, or the teachers who sometimes uneasily tried to laugh off what he knew now must be magic. But Harry still knew when someone was laughing from a position of superiority, and this was awfully like this.

“Run-on sentences are ones that do not have enough pauses in the middle of them.” Riddle touched what must be the thestral’s head and said something in a low murmur, and it flew further on towards the huge domed building. “You’ll learn some of the grammar in Professor Owens’s class.”

“ _Grammar_?” Harry stared at Riddle’s back, but infuriatingly, he didn’t turn around or do anything other than chuckle. “I thought we were going to learn brilliant things here! Spells, and curses, and ways to hurt our enemies!”

“Bloodthirsty, aren’t you?”

“You would be, too, if you’d grown up with some Muggles like the Dursleys.”

“Oh, Harry,” said Riddle, his voice floating over Harry like cold mist. “I grew up with Muggles who were not like the Dursleys, but at least as bad. I understand the desire to torture, to curse, to punish. But your life cannot be based only on that. I am not training soldiers here. I am training _revolutionaries._ ”

Harry blinked and kept still for a moment. They were almost to the domed building, and he thought that meant he was going to find out what it was, but his mind was busy with something else right now. “You—you think revolutionaries need to know _grammar_?”

“You think they don’t?” They aimed towards the dome, and then began to spiral down in a long motion that made Harry catch his breath. But not because it was scary, because it was _brilliant._ He’d never dreamed of something like this when he’d lived with the Dursleys.

 _Just yesterday._ He and Riddle had spent the night in the Leaky Cauldron—a real wizarding pub—and Riddle had briefly left on some kind of errand, but Harry hadn’t minded that. He’d chatted with Tom, the old barkeep, and eaten his first Chocolate Frog and laughed at a ridiculous song that came out of the wireless.

A _magical_ song. He was _magical._ It was still almost too much to absorb.

“You never answered my question.”

Harry started to reply, but the thestral landed then, and the jolt ran right up into his mouth and almost made him bite his tongue. Harry coughed as the thestral trotted across the grass and came to a stop in front of the domed building, and finally managed to answer. “Fine, I don’t know. Why do revolutionaries need to know grammar?”

“To pass among the purebloods when they need to.” Riddle glanced over his shoulder, smiling, and Harry leaped to the right conclusion.

“You’re training _spies_ , too!” Harry bounced in place on the thestral, who snorted, and then felt bad about it and patted the thing that felt like a scaly wing nearest him. The thestral hopefully accepted the pat graciously.

“Yes. Among other things. And a revolution that is lasting will not only destroy, and curse, and burn. It needs people who understand the way society works, and can forge a new one out of the ashes.” Riddle tilted his head towards the domed building. “But for now, come and meet one of the beings who will help us forge it.”

*

Potter was silent from what seemed like awe as they approached the vast doors on the side of the building. Tom had no delusions that it would last, though. Potter’s mind was searching, and probing, and the kind that would reach into cracks and pry answers out of them—if the probing was encouraged.

Tom meant to encourage it, although of course not the kind that would undermine what they were trying to build here.

When they halted in front of the doors, Tom turned to Potter. “Why do you think this building is so large?”

“Well, at first I thought it was a church and you had religious services in it or something.” Potter’s eyes regarded him for a long moment before he turned around and stared at the doors again. They were ancient stone, although Potter seemed to appreciate their size more than anything. “But then I thought that doesn’t make sense. There’s no cross or star or anything.”

“Star?” Tom asked.

“Sometimes churches have a star.”

Tom nodded and put the thought aside for a moment. The boy might be misinterpreting Judaism for all he knew, or perhaps it was another thing he had seen on the Muggle telly. “In this case, it is because an important ally of our school lives here, and the building has to be large enough to accommodate her.”

“A giant?”

Tom smiled. “In a manner of speaking.” He turned to face the stone doors again. “ _Belasha, would you come forth_?”

Potter jumped at the sound of the Parseltongue, but that was only to be expected. Tom just made sure that he had a tight grip on the boy’s shoulder so he wouldn’t bolt as the doors slid open with a low creaking sound. No expense or magic had been spared to make sure that they could move easily, and Belasha wouldn’t have to nudge them with her snout every time.

The basilisk slid into the open, turning her head back and forth slowly so that her green scales would blaze in the sunlight and the boy could admire her. Tom laughed and stepped forwards. “ _You vain thing._ ”

“ _Vain creatures win admiration._ ”

That much was certainly true, Tom thought as he scratched her head that she had lowered to him. Her mouth was big enough to swallow him in a single gulp, but he was well-used to her size by now. The sensitive area of scales around her small horns made her twist her head further to the side and flicker her tongue out.

“It’s—it’s _huge._ ”

Tom glanced down to see that Potter was pressed against the back of his legs, peering around him. “She is a basilisk, Mr. Potter, and her name is Belasha. I am sure that she would prefer, as I do, that you address her by name and as a _she_.”

Potter’s throat bobbed as he stared at Belasha, while Belasha twisted her head to the side and rolled her coils to show off the small flecks of gold and red among the deep green. “I—you said something about basilisks yesterday. How come we aren’t dying or being turned to stone by her eyes?”

“Basilisks Petrify people, they don’t literally turn them to stone,” Tom corrected. Then again, Potter wasn’t doing badly for being in front of a giant snake for the first time in his life. Tom had had students run away, wet themselves, and faint. Potter’s eyes remained wide, but he seemed to think that there was no danger as long as Tom wasn’t running. Or maybe he had actually listened when Tom had identified Belasha as an ally of the school. “And Belasha was wise enough to agree to an enchantment that gave her full control of the power of her gaze. Before, she could not look into someone’s eyes without doing as you say, Petrifying or killing depending on how direct the meeting of her eyes was. Now, she can choose to do so, even when she’s roaming the grounds of the school at night.”

“Um. Does she do it to people who are—annoying?”

It was something that Tom let some particularly mischievous students of the school believe, hut he suspected Potter was asking out of wariness that could become terror. He had known pain and the edge of hatred in his aunt’s household. Tom must not allow it to develop too much. “No. Only to enemies of our school, and those she collects as prey.”

“ _The child is pretty, Tom. His eyes are almost the shade of green of my scales._ ”

“ _I’m sure he’ll be flattered to hear it._ ”

“Um. What’s that you’re speaking?”

“Parseltongue. The language of snakes.” Tom considered Potter, and found that he had locked his hands behind his back, the better not to show them trembling, probably. Perhaps that was enough interaction with a basilisk for right now. “ _Have you finished eating that Nundu, Belasha_?”

“ _No. And it was challenging to kill, too. You are finally becoming a proper caretaker._ ” Belasha rolled one more coil, in case Potter hadn’t had enough to admire yet, and then turned and slithered back into her lair. The doors slid shut behind her.

“ _Wow_ ,” Potter sighed, sounding awed enough that Tom had to keep his lips from twitching.. “She’s brilliant. But there’s one thing I don’t understand?”

“Yes?” Tom asked encouragingly as he turned away from the building. The thestral mare had already trotted away to rejoin her herd. From here, it was certainly easy enough for Tom and Harry to reach the sleeping quarters, and Tom thought that part of Fortius better shown-off from a ground perspective, anyway.

“If the grounds are invisible to anyone outside the school, why do you need Belasha to roam around and Petrify people?”

Tom smiled. It was a properly paranoid question, the kind of thing he might ask himself. “Because there are people who can break past the magic to enter, Mr. Potter. Some of the purebloods are less convinced than others that I am the harmless half-blood acquiescing to their power that I pretend to be, and they have tried to enter the school grounds before.”

“What’s ackwesing mean?”

“Acquiescing,” Tom corrected as they rounded the corner of Belasha’s quarters, and pretended that he didn’t see the way Potter rolled his eyes. He would have had little independence and ability to ask his own questions with his relatives. Tom didn’t want to quash those qualities now. On the other hand, Potter’s attendance at grammar and elocution classes had become more urgent than ever. “It means bowing down to. Agreeing.”

“Those are different things.”

Tom raised an eyebrow. “Not the way I mean them.”

He looked from the corner of his eye to find Potter regarding him with a skeptical look. But then his jaw dropped again the way it had when he saw Belasha, and Tom turned to see what had prompted this.

Nothing, apparently, but the full view of Fortius. Potter was staring at the pool of water that spread out long, rilling fingers of creeks along the paths, and the bridges that—ah, that floated in the air, their ends a few inches above either bank. That would be remarkable to a child who was essentially Muggleborn, of course. Tom reminded himself again not to be led by the kinship between their wands and their similar childhoods into thinking that Potter was _exactly_ like him.

“Um. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just have the bridges go from one bank to another?”

“Simpler, but we can use magic. Why wouldn’t we?”

Potter’s shoulders went back at that, and he took what sounded like a deep, cleansing breath. “Yeah. And we have just as much of a right to magic as the haughtiest purebloods, don’t we?”

“We do.” Tom smiled at him. “ _More,_ in fact, because we aren’t wasting all our money on research that attempts to prove Muggles and Muggleborns aren’t human.”

“ _What_?”

 _I timed that revelation well,_ Tom thought as he watched the indignation run through Potter and his magic flare out around him. The air around him stained with red and blue until it glowed like stained glass. Potter turned to face him and folded his arms.

“How can you let them get away with that?”

“I lack the political power as yet to stop them. And if I had shown my magical power forth to convince them, then someone would have attempted to gain control of _me._ There are spells and potions that can control people, Mr. Potter. Control their minds, their actions, their bodies, or simply hurt them if they disobey.”

Potter narrowed his eyes instead of looking sick the way Tom had thought he might. “And things weren’t so bad when you were younger, right?”

Tom nodded as he escorted Potter over one of the floating bridges, a graceful arch of white wood that Potter touched with wondering fingertips. “Correct. Now, any powerful half-blood is seized and subjected to control and indoctrination—”

“What?”

“Brainwashing. To convince him or her that the purebloods are right, and they should apologize for their own ‘dirty’ Muggle or Muggleborn parent.”

Potter stopped walking, and Tom turned to face him. They were nearly to the other side of the stream, and Tom had wanted to see the look on Potter’s face when he saw around the corner of the teachers’ quarters. But he supposed that the betrayal in the wide green eyes was its own reward.

“But no one would be stupid enough to fall for that.”

Tom let his expression smooth out as he leaned an elbow on the side of the bridge. “Do you really think that, Harry? Didn’t you ever believe what your relatives said about you, if only a little?”

Harry shivered. (Tom supposed that he should give up and allow himself to call the boy by his first name when they were not in class). “I—this isn’t about me. It’s about other people who’re better than me.”

Tom leaned forwards, and waited longer than he’d thought he’d have to until Harry raised his eyes back to Tom’s face. “Listen to me,” Tom said softly. “You are stronger than you know.”

“I slept in a cupboard. I _let_ them make me sleep in a cupboard. If I have all this magic, why didn’t I just throw them across the room and claim what was mine?”

 _Ah, here’s the crisis of confidence._ It had, admittedly, taken longer than Tom had thought it would. He squeezed one of Harry’s hands and said, “Because you didn’t know that magic was real. And one reason we call it _accidental_ magic before children get their wands is because it happens in bursts of potential, without conscious direction.” He left aside his own experiments in magic at a young age. Harry was a different person than Tom had been, even given everything. “You might have tried to throw your relatives across the room and only ended up turning their hair green, or something similar. Accidental magic is often more frightening than offensive. Offensive and defensive magic both take years to master. Regardless, I will _not_ stand for you putting yourself down. Do you understand?”

Harry stared at him for a second, and then abruptly snapped to his full height—inconsiderable as that was at the moment—and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Tom smiled, let go of Harry’s hand, and stepped around the corner of the teachers’ quarters. Harry followed him without seeming to notice what was going on in the outside world, in favor of the one inside his head.

And then he stopped and gasped in an awe-stricken breath.

Tom sighed. _There it is._

*

From the air, Harry had seen that a lot of the buildings at Fortius were made of white stone that was probably marble. But he hadn’t realized what they _looked_ like. It was probably only visible when you were on the ground.

In front of him spread a long swathe of green marked by those white stone paths and little shining rivers, and four buildings, two to either side of the green. The buildings were made of stone like the rest, but _shaped like animals._ The one nearest to Harry was a huge, rearing horse with wings, the wings spread out with small signs of windows and ladders on them. Right next to it was a giant bird with its wings also spread and its head thrown back, encircled by stone things that were probably supposed to be flames. Harry remembered Riddle telling him about phoenixes last night.

And on the other side was a creature that must be the gryphon, hind legs like a cat’s and eagle head and wings, although it was standing on all four legs instead of rearing. Even as Harry watched, a door opened in the huge curved beak, and someone stepped out and simply _floated_ down to the ground. Other people followed, some of them small enough that Harry knew they couldn’t be adults. He spun around to Riddle, staring the question he couldn’t ask.

Riddle smiled at him. It had too many teeth, but it was still better than any other smile that Harry had got from an adult. “Yes, Harry,” he said simply. “Everyone learns the kind of magic necessary to living here.”

Breathless, Harry turned around to inspect the last building, which was low and curled close to the ground, unlike the others, beyond the gryphon. It was a snake of some sort, he thought, but then saw the horns on the head and changed his mind. No, a dragon. There were probably long corridors inside that coiled body, he thought absently.

“Why are they shaped that way?” he asked. “Isn’t it sort of—silly?” But he didn’t think it looked silly. He thought it looked brilliant, and he couldn’t wait to live in one.

“They were originally built as simply stone buildings, but the magic of the Houses altered them.” Riddle nodded to one of the students—at least, she was small enough to be a student—who had settled to the ground and was advancing towards them. “Look at Miss Johnson there, and you will probably be able to see it.”

Harry squinted, and made out a swirling, dancing white light around the girl, who had dark skin and thick hair in braids. “What’s that?”

“It’s the magic of the House, which accompanies every student Sorted into a particular one. If the student is in danger, the magic manifests to protect her, and to send a message to the professors. If there’s something else wrong that doesn’t need a professor’s intervention, like a simple argument with another student that has no bullying involved, then the magic appears and offers comfort. Or separates the two students before the fight gets physical.”

 _I wish I’d had that at the school Dudley and I attended._ Harry swallowed and said something to distract himself. “And that, what? Turned the buildings into a gryphon and a horse and a phoenix?”

“And a dragon. Yes.” Riddle sounded amused about something, but he smiled as the student marched up to them and halted in front of him. “Hello, Miss Johnson.”

“Professor Riddle, you’re _still_ wrong about the defensive use of that charm. I talked to Professor Alger, and she said so.” Johnson’s chin was tilted up, and she nodded as if that decided everything. The magic hovered behind one shoulder, and then another, moving too quickly for Harry to really see it, but he thought he caught a glimpse of a claw and a beak for a second, and thought Johnson was probably in Phoenix House.

“With all due respect to Professor Alger, she teaches Offensive Magic, not Defense.”

“But you’re _wrong_ ,” Johnson said, and then marched off. There were two girls waiting for her, and a boy who looked maybe a year older than Harry. They all burst into chatter as they met up, and then one of them said something excited and they broke into a run around the corner of the gryphon’s claw.

“So, um…those are where the students in that House live? And sleep?”

“And go to some of their classes,” Riddle said, and nodded.

“There are enough professors for that? Or do some students have to go from one building to another?”

“We have enough professors that _we_ are the ones who go from House to House, for the most part, although certain specialized classes can only be held in some other places, like the Offensive Magic class that these students came from. As we grow larger, that might not be sustainable, but it’s only a few years since Fortius Academy began to have more than a hundred students at a time.”

Harry blinked. “I thought it was older than that.”

“Some decades.” Riddle shrugged. “I couldn’t establish the school as soon as I wanted or attract that many students as soon as I wanted. I had to study the magic that would allow me to defend the school, the legalities to establish it, the diplomacy that would allow me to work around the purebloods’ understandable reluctance to lose fees-paying students at Hogwarts.” For a moment, his eyes shone with that red color Harry thought he had seen once before. “The history and laws and magic that would allow my revolution to succeed.”

“How is this school in the middle of London, anyway?” Harry demanded as Riddle steered him around the animal-shaped buildings and into the middle of the green grass again. “ _Someone_ was bound to notice if that much land just went missing overnight!”

“There are charms that would prevent Muggles from remembering,” Riddle said, but his face had the kind of amused smile that it had had when he was talking to Johnson. “But it would have been counterproductive to my ultimate goals to anger the portions of the Muggle government that _are_ aware of magic by taking a section of London away from its citizens. No, I found the land elsewhere, bought it, and then placed it in London.”

Harry stared at him. Riddle walked on a few paces and nodded to a building that looked like it was made of marble cheese, with big holes in the sides. “So you can see that this is where the students eat, and—”

“Wait,” Harry interrupted. “I’m going to need some more explanation of this.”

“Of the dining hall? The holes are windows that are protected with magic instead of glass—”

“No. I mean, _the land._ You bought the land elsewhere and then _placed_ it? How? You just picked it up and plopped it down?”

Riddle turned to face him. “Yes. Essentially.”

Harry stared at him. Then he said weakly, “No one’s that powerful.”

Riddle gave him one of those smiles that seemed to emphasize his teeth. Around him, for a moment, the air was filled with curling snakes of power, and Harry was absolutely sure that Riddle’s gift of speaking to snakes was no accident. “I am.”

Harry stared at him some more. Then he asked what he thought was the most interesting thing, instead of the most frightening thing. “I could use your wand. I threw you across the room. Am I going to be that powerful?”

“ _Exactly_ as powerful? I don’t know. That’s not the best way to judge a wizard’s power. I’ll need to see you casting upper-level spells with a wand in your head before I know for certain. But…”

Riddle took a step towards him and bent down, staring at him. Harry stared back, his heart wild with excitement. Unlike the other times an adult had bent down to his level, this didn’t feel condescending.

“I think so,” Riddle whispered.

Harry felt as though someone had tied a gold medal around his neck and given him revenge on the Dursleys at the same time. He was going to be able to defend himself and maybe stand on even ground with a wizard powerful enough to plop a _school_ in the middle of _London_.

He loved everything about his new life.


	5. The Noose Around Their Necks

“Did the latest payment arrive on time, Arthur?”

Arthur did his best to subdue his own nervousness while he met Lucius Malfoy’s eyes through the fire. “It did, Minister Malfoy. Thank you for your thoughtfulness and your generosity.”

The words burned his mouth, but, well, they had all made sacrifices, hadn’t they? Some people valued peace, and some (like Malfoy) power, and some gold. What Arthur valued was his family. Without the Minister’s generous stipend for all pureblood families, they wouldn’t have been able to afford to have as many children as Molly had wanted.

And, of course, without the experimental research into potions that Malfoy’s government had funded, they wouldn’t have had their three daughters at all.

“Ah.” The lines around Malfoy’s mouth eased a little, as if the news mattered to him, and he nodded. “Good, good. I look forward to seeing your twins at Hogwarts this year. That is,” he added, with another quiver of his lips that hinted at a smile, “your second pair of twins. Ron and, what is it, Victoria?”

“Yes, that’s the name of our daughter, Minister.” And Arthur couldn’t help the deep fondness that crept into his voice. Daughters were rare in the Weasley family. Victoria was the first born in at least fifty years.

And then they had two more, him and Molly. Truly, they were living in an age of miracles.

Immediately, the thought scorched Arthur, because of course it wasn’t an age of miracles for Muggleborns or those half-bloods who had any sort of power. But…well, he couldn’t do much to help _them_ if he’d remained like he was in the past, could he? At least this way, with a voice that was respected in the Ministry because of blood purity politics, he could push for gentler laws and the reforms that Headmaster Dumbledore had wanted.

“I do look forward to them meeting Draco.”

“Yes, sir,” Arthur murmured. The whole of magical Britain knew that Minister Malfoy’s son was to attend Hogwarts this year, of course. The Minister’s family were all celebrities who had breathless articles devoted to them in the _Daily Prophet_ each week. “Between you and me, young Victoria fancies him a bit.”

Malfoy laughed. “Ah, well, I can’t promise that Draco will be able to return her feelings, but I’m sure he’ll behave like a proper gentleman with her.”

“Yes, sir.”

Malfoy turned abruptly, looking over his shoulder into the invisible space of his office, and then sighed in annoyance. “My apologies, Arthur. I am enjoying our conversation, but I have a crisis trying to take up my attention. You’ll understand, I’m sure,” he added, as he began to dust his knees off. “After all, you’re a man of some importance in the Ministry yourself.”

 _Only because of my blood._ But Arthur smoothed out the truths that wanted to trip off his tongue. He couldn’t help anybody, not the Muggleborns and not his family, if he was sacked. “Yes, sir. Have a good day.”

The green cast to the flames winked out, and Arthur sat back and raised a shaky hand to his eyes. He always felt that way after a conversation with Malfoy.

His family had the money it had needed to thrive. Molly didn’t have to spend time running herself ragged to take care of the children. They had Victoria, and Ginny, and Evangeline—and the others, of course, but those last three were miracles that they couldn’t have counted on without the research into potions.

“We’re very blessed,” Arthur said aloud, and didn’t startle at the bitterness of his own voice.

*

“You’ll be careful, Mum, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course.” Pandora Lovegood bent down and kissed her daughter gently on the head. “You understand that just because the Ministry Divinators foresaw danger for me _once_ , it doesn’t mean it’s always there when I go into the lab?”

“Yes, Mum. It’s just—”

Luna clung to her. Pandora sighed and let her hand slowly stroke her eldest child’s forehead. Luna was the only one who had been old enough to remember the Divinators’ warning that Pandora would die if she tried to conduct a certain experiment in her lab on a certain day. Prometheus and Selene had only been a toddler and an infant at the time.

“I know.” Pandora kissed Luna again. “But I promise that I’ll be careful, and because I’m an accessory to the Unspeakables, I have some of their protections woven into the lab now.” It was the same speech she gave every time, but it reassured Luna, so of course she would give it again. Luna’s eyes deepened and softened as she listened. “I love you, shining moon.”

That at least got Luna to smile. “I love you, too, Mum.” And she stepped back, watching intently as Pandora descended the stairs.

 _It’s sort of a relief that Luna will go to Hogwarts this year,_ Pandora admitted to herself as she entered the lab and tapped her wand against an enchanted crystal sconce on the wall, which made all the other sconces flare to life as light leaped between them. _She needs to focus on something other than me. Pursue her own interests. Not think so much about death._

Of course, some of _that_ came from Xeno and his obsession with the Hallows. Pandora shook her head as she walked towards the polished granite table covered with cauldrons, pliers, measuring tapes that were a variation of the ones Ollivander used in his shop, and all the other tools she needed for the work. He was a dear man, or she wouldn’t have fallen in love with and married him, but he was _dotty_ about the Hallows.

Pandora faced the crystal cauldron on the nearest lip of the table and closed her eyes, letting thoughts of her family drain away. Balance. Center. Essentially, practice Occlumency of a specialized kind that shut away everything but thought of what she was trying to do. Otherwise, the delicate magical research could go sideways. It was finicky enough that it responded even to thought patterns.

Once she was calmest, Pandora opened her eyes and began another day of measuring magic.

*

“You need a strong wand, young man.”

Neville nodded nervously as he followed his grandmother into Ollivander’s. He could have come with his mum and dad, but his father was an Auror and always busy, and his mum was a Healer who’d had a rush of new dragonpox cases lately. And two of the dragonpox cases were Neville’s younger brothers.

Besides, his grandmother would make sure that he got matched with the right kind of wand. There had been studies done that showed some of the wands handed to purebloods in the past were—not the right kind. That was why some purebloods had been mistakenly labeled as weaker than Muggleborns and the like. Ollivander’s was so old and beloved that the Ministry had stopped short of accusing the owner of actually doing it on purpose, but they had bound him with vows to do his best about the matching.

Neville took a deep breath and looked up as Mr. Ollivander came out of the back of the shop. He had a tight smile that dissolved a little when he saw them.

Gran gave him a regal nod. “We’re here to see about my Neville’s wand,” she said, and then took a seat near the shop door. She watched Ollivander as sternly as the eyes of the stuffed vulture on her hat.

“Of course, of course.” Ollivander considered him for a second, and Neville shifted under the stare of those silver eyes. But then he put back his chin and stood up a little straighter.

He had received lessons in self-confidence from the time he was a young child. They were necessary for all purebloods in Britain, who had spent so much time being battered down by people like former Headmaster Dumbledore. Well-meaning people, from what his Gran had told Neville. But they were the kind who promoted lies in the name of promoting equality. They had said that Muggleborns were just as strong as purebloods, and that blood didn’t matter, when, well, it wasn’t _true._

 _Your heritage is the foundation of everything you do._ Neville had learned that lesson when he was a toddler, and everything he had learned since had reinforced it.

No one had to be mean to anyone. Gran had always taught Neville to be polite to Muggleborns, and not call them Mudbloods, the way so many people did. But one also had to be conscious of one’s illustrious heritage, and the fact that Muggleborns weren’t as rooted in the earth as purebloods were, and that their magic was more chaotic and, well, dirtier.

With half-bloods, of course, it depended on power. Gran was progressive, and so were Neville’s Mum and Dad. One could make allowances for a half-blood raised in the Muggle world, and it would have been monstrous to harvest them or call them names. They understood their place most of the time better than Muggleborns did, anyway.

“Let’s see, beech and dragon heartstring…”

That one barely made sparks fly out of the end, and Ollivander snatched it away and replaced it with ebony and unicorn hair, which was replaced with apple wood and phoenix feather. Then came a string of ash wands, all with different cores, and another ebony one, and birch and unicorn hair—

“ _There._ ”

Neville smiled as he watched red and gold sparks leap into the air. That was a good sign that his House would be Gryffindor, like his mum’s and dad’s, and that he would continue following in their footsteps and supporting his lineage.

“That will be seven Galleons, young man.”

Gran paid Ollivander solemnly, and then escorted Neville out the door. Her hand on his shoulder, usually so stern that it was almost a pinch, was comforting now. Neville looked up at her, bit his lip, and dared to say, “You think I didn’t shame anyone, then, Gran?”

Gran smiled down at him, and it was a real smile, something Neville had hardly ever seen on her face. “Of course not, Neville. That’s a magnificent wand, and you’ll be a magnificent young man.”

They went back to the manor, Neville’s heart floating so high in his chest that it could have carried him without a broom.

*

“You are to be commended on your attempts to redress inequality at Hogwarts, Minerva.”

When Headmistress Celaeno Carrow spoke in that particular voice, Minerva had a strong urge to transform into a cat and scratch her eyes out. All it really took was a single strong leap, a slash with one paw from the left and one from the right…

But that would leave her students defenseless. Minerva bowed her head a little and nodded. “Thank you, Headmistress,” she murmured, eyes on the Nundu kitten chained to the leg of Carrow’s desk. It had been blinded, declawed, and fed potions that robbed it of its poisonous breath. It lay still and silent most of the time, head cradled on its motionless paws.

Minerva knew exactly how it felt.

“No, I mean it,” said Carrow, and leaned forwards, her smile sweet, her blue eyes large, her black hair long and stringy. Purebloods never bothered to do much about changing their looks, secure in their perception that they were the top of the hierarchy. “You have actually restrained your Gryffindors from bullying Slytherins in the corridors, taught the half-bloods their place, and encouraged Mudbloods to attend the school while being realistic about the challenges they’ll face. It’s commendable.”

“Thank you, Headmistress,” Minerva repeated in a stronger voice, and continued to keep her head bowed. Carrow was a Legilimens. If she saw through Minerva’s eyes to her thoughts…

_Remember that you have a position to keep up as Gryffindor’s Head of House._

“Despite your own _misfortunes,_ you know that it is better for Mudbloods and half-bloods to be here instead of without the walls.”

Minerva nodded in whole-hearted agreement for the first time. Yes, there was the Fortius Academy, but they didn’t accept all students, and, well, they didn’t have the academic grandeur that Hogwarts did. They were so _young._ They focused on blood status in a way that Minerva found damning, and they didn’t have the number of professors they should, and some of those professors were from other countries and had foreign ideas, and they didn’t teach all the disciplines that Hogwarts did.

There was still value, Minerva thought, in walking these halls, in being Sorted into one of the Four Houses that the Founders had created. How Sorting was done at Fortius, she had never been able to find out for sure. And how could anyone be sure that they were in the House that best matched their personality and goals if they didn’t sit under the Sorting Hat?

Fortius didn’t even have a system of prefects, from what Minerva had heard. They left all discipline and patrolling up to the professors. Minerva pitied them, no longer able to focus on education.

“About the Mudblood who struck young Mr. Burke the other day.”

“She’s been expelled and her wand snapped.” Minerva kept her voice brisk and business-like. It was the best way to deal with blood purists, she’d found. And in this case, it would keep them from visiting more harm on the poor girl who’d fought back against the vicious “pranks” that Mr. Burke of Slytherin had played on her.

Minerva felt both sympathetic and exasperated when she thought of Adelaide Finch-Fletchley. What in the world had the girl been _thinking_? One didn’t fight back against someone whose father and uncle sat in the Wizengamot. One came to the professors and asked for help, which Minerva would have granted.

She could have taught the girl Impervious Charms which would shed prank hexes and jinxes like they were water. But Finch-Fletchley hadn’t asked, and so she had been expelled to make her own way in the world, neither belonging to the Muggle one nor in the magical one, half-and-half in a way that Minerva thought would be a far worse fate than anything Burke could have done to her.

“You’ve handled it already, then?”

“Yes, I thought that the best, Headmistress Carrow.” Minerva frowned a little. “Should I not have done that? I did Floo the Mudblood Discipline Department in the Ministry, but they said that that was the punishment on record.”

“Say, rather,” said Carrow, after a long, silent considering of her that was designed to make Minerva fidget and didn’t work, “that next time, I would prefer to oversee the punishment myself, and might appreciate a little less _enthusiasm_ in the cause.”

“Of course, Headmistress.” Minerva bowed her head again, but this time it waw to veil the relief that threatened to burn through her disguise. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry, Minerva. I think you should go back to your duties as Head of Gryffindor, however. There are many students who seem to delight in roaming the corridors near curfew.”

Minerva nodded briskly and stood up. “Yes, and unfortunately, my House causes the most trouble for all that we’re the smallest one in the school now.”

The Headmistress laughed, a sliding, eerie chuckle that had always reminded Minerva of a hyena that had found wounded prey. She tried not to remember that hyenas could kill lions. “Well, can you blame the Hat for finally seeing what it should have seen all along? Or even Mudbloods for wanting to avoid a House with a reputation for daring and brashness in a world where we all understand our place?”

“No, Headmistress,” Minerva said obediently.

“Oh, go along with you, Minerva.” Carrow flapped a hand at her. “I know well enough that not all Gryffindors are like that. You got to keep your job, after all, didn’t you?”

Minerva nodded, and smiled, and escaped.

As she rode down the moving staircase, she watched the walls change about her in silence, and _seethed._

But what good would it do to show Carrow any flash of temper? Minerva knew well enough that any pureblood they brought in to be Head of Gryffindor would find the position humiliating, and would take out their temper on the students.

Well, either that, or they would be a sadistic bastard who delighted in torture as much as Carrow herself did.

No, for the sake of her students who had no other advocate, she must keep holding the line, no matter how much she hated it.

*

“Are you going to be all right, Miss Finch-Fletchley?”

The Muggleborn girl nodded and pushed the hair out of her eyes without looking at Tom. “I—yes, Headmaster. I just—don’t understand why you appeared and snapped me up like that the minute I was expelled from Hogwarts.”

“Part of the Academy’s purpose is to offer a sanctuary to young Muggleborns and half-bloods who get expelled—”

She spun around to stare at him. Finch-Fletchley had blonde hair and brown eyes, and she looked as if she was continually on the verge of crying and stopping herself. Tom had to admit he was impressed with her strength, even if she _had_ been in the House that was known for that kind of thing. “I don’t mean that. I mean why did you offer me a place now, and not when I was eleven? I would have been happier here!”

“Miss Finch-Fletchley.” Tom waited a moment until she was focused on him, and not staring around the soft blue Fortius infirmary as if waiting for someone to emerge and ambush her. “I _did_ offer you a place.”

“You didn’t! I would have remembered—”

She cut herself off. Tom nodded. “Exactly. I am afraid that, since you refused and said you wanted to go to Hogwarts for the sense of tradition it offered, I made sure that you did not remember my visit.”

“You _Obliviated_ me. That’s awful.”

Finch-Fletchley looked like she was about to cry again. Despite what people like Lucius would say, Tom wasn’t in the business of enjoying tears, and so he controlled his sigh and sat down in the chair that was next to the hospital bed she’d got off earlier, after their own Healer had checked her over for any magical shock or worse consequences from her wand being snapped. “Yes, I need to protect the school and the students here.”

“ _I’m_ a student here now.”

Tom concealed his pleased smile. He hadn’t been sure, until that moment, that Finch-Fletchley had actually accepted his offer. “You are. But you will still have promises and oaths that you need to keep. For one thing, you’ll find that you can’t speak of certain school secrets outside these walls.”

“Because of the purebloods?”

“Partially. Also because of the people who might think that a half-blood shouldn’t be running a school, and some older Muggleborns who will be angry that Fortius didn’t exist when they were in Hogwarts and want to ruin it.” Tom shrugged when Finch-Fletchley stared at him. “I’ve dealt with several of them now. I wish I could have rescued them, but the timeline couldn’t be sped up.”

“I see it,” Finch-Fletchley breathed. “I see how I could have become bitter like them.” She closed her eyes and shivered for a second. Then she focused on Tom again with a keen gaze that he was glad to see. “I don’t have a wand.”

“You’ll be matched with one in one of the shops that our students go to. Don’t worry, they’re much more discreet than parading down Diagon Alley to get to Ollivander’s.”

“That’s good. And—I have a little brother. I don’t think you offered a place to him. He said he was going to attend Hogwarts.”

Tom thought a moment before he responded. “I didn’t offer a place to him because you had refused, and I thought he likely would as well, if only because he’d want to attend the school that his older sister did. And, well, his marks aren’t as good as I’d like.”

Finch-Fletchley sighed. “Justin’s—too used to coasting on our family’s money. He would have got into Eton, no problem, just because of who our father is.” She folded her arms to hug herself. “I know, now, that he’ll want to come here. My parents will insist on it. I’ll make sure that his marks stay in an acceptable range.”

“If you wish to take on that burden. We also have capable professors and tutors.”

“Most people find Justin so charming they don’t hold him to his promises.”

Tom chuckled, remembering his own days in Hogwarts and how easy it had been to charm some people into doing what he wanted. “I assure you, I’m familiar with the type. So are my professors, many of whom have either been that kind of student or are used to them. Your brother won’t want for people to keep him on track.”

Finch-Fletchley closed her eyes. “Thank you. That was what bothered me the most about being expelled from Hogwarts—the thought of my brother going there next year and suffering the same things I did.”

Her shoulders trembled abruptly, and Tom stood. “I’ll contact Professor Johnson to escort you to get your wand in a few hours’ time. Perhaps you’d like to rest first?”

“Yes, thank you, Professor Riddle,” Finch-Fletchley whispered.

If she let the tears out, she did it after he’d exited the room.

Tom paced silently down the corridor to his office, high in the tower that stood next to Belasha’s lair. He was pleased with how that had gone. Even when expelled from Hogwarts and summarily refused a place in the world they had thought would be theirs, not all Muggleborns came to Fortius. Some of them had simply absorbed too many tales at Hogwarts of how “inferior” Tom’s school was, and others had mourned the loss of their magic so deeply that they wanted to withdraw from it altogether.

But the ones who were willing to struggle to reclaim the world that was _indeed_ theirs were among his strongest students.

And his strongest revolutionaries.

Tom stepped into his office, a large half-circular space with a window that overlooked Belasha’s dome and the new student dormitories where, tonight, Harry Potter would be sleeping. Tom crossed over to the far side of the room, where an innocent-looking crystal globe stood on a bookshelf. It was a half-dome, and looking at it, someone might have thought it was a broken crystal ball, kept perhaps by someone with not enough talent in Divination to use a whole one.

In fact, it was a magical device that could perhaps change the world in the future when Tom released news of it. For now, he had no intention of suffering the fates of Muggleborn and half-blood spellcrafters in the last few decades: accusations of stealing ideas from purebloods, and _Obliviation_ at best, the Dementor’s Kiss at worst.

Tom laid his wand on the globe, and it woke and began to shimmer with a subtle chime. Tom bent over it, breathed on the embodied, anchored spell, and said, “ _Spy time._ ”

The summons fled outwards, on the nearly undetectable link of a long-lasting Imperius Curse that existed between the crystal and Tom’s best spy in the enemy camp. It wouldn’t do to be found having used the spell himself; there were new charms that could search out any spell a wand had ever cast, and casting the Imperius on a pureblood rated an instant execution. But with the Imperius in this form, it was both much less likely to be found in the victim’s mind and undetectable on Tom’s wand. The crystal _was_ the spell. Unless it was activated, his control over the pureblood didn’t exist.

For what Tom required of his spy, the control didn’t need to be constant.

His Floo lit perhaps half an hour later. Having such a buried spy did mean that sometimes she couldn’t get away immediately. Tom sat back with a small smile and watched as she came through the fire and collapsed to her knees in front of him—something Tom had to admit he enjoyed.

“My lord,” she intoned.

That impulse, Tom _hadn’t_ planted in her. But there was something cringing and subservient in so many purebloods, who didn’t know how to react to a powerful wizard as an equal.

Tom leaned forwards. “What have you to report, Narcissa?”


	6. The Properties of Wards

Tom sat back with a thoughtful frown after Narcissa had departed via the Floo. He hadn’t realized that the purebloods thought they had wards capable of alerting them when a half-blood or Muggleborn entered a restaurant.

Of course, they didn’t _really_ sense blood status. Which meant the wards were detecting something else, and alerting when they found it.

Tom would have to investigate what that was, in case he wound up in a situation where the wards started to detect _him_. If Malfoy or someone else prominent in the pureblood government found out about his tightly-furled magic now, things would go from delicately-balanced to disastrous.

He had just begun to write down a few notes about how best to get information on the wards in the restaurant Narcissa had spoken of when someone began knocking furiously on his office door. Tom slid the note under an acceptance letter from a Muggleborn student who already had family here and called, “Come in.”

“Forgive me for intruding…”

Tom had never seen Janet Clarkson, the Herbology professor, so pale, for all that she had some Nordic heritage and looked that way naturally. She took a step into his office and then halted, shivering. Tom stood up. “It’s all right. What’s happened, Janet?”

She looked him helplessly in the eye for a second, then opened her hand. Tom took a step nearer, and then stopped. In her palm rested the crushed remains of a small scarlet bead.

“I’ve kept it on my desk since that little girl accepted her letter,” Janet whispered. “It broke five minutes ago.”

Tom closed his eyes and nodded. The beads were tied to the life-force of any Muggleborn or half-blood student who didn’t currently live at the school, although for most of them, that only mattered during the summers. It would break only if they had died. And it would break in _this_ manner only if the child had been harvested.

“I had a meeting this evening with Lucienne,” he said. “Will you find her and tell her that something else came up?”

“Of course.” Janet hesitated a long moment, but in the end, she decided that she didn’t want to know what he was going to do. Wise of her, given that Tom wouldn’t have told her anyway. She nodded to him and then turned and walked out of the office, a few red flakes falling from the hand that held the bead that had been a life.

Tom stood there, remembering the life that it had been, a girl named Cassandra Riptoe, who had laughed with delight when Tom went to show her magic on her eleventh birthday last year. Who had liked flowers. Who had asked if she could bring a kitten with her, and had been thrilled when Tom told her about Kneazles.

He let the memories settle into his bones, and condense into chill power in his stomach. Then he slipped a few prepared crystals into his pockets from his desk, bent down, and picked up one of the red flakes from the floor.

It was enough. With the memories and the portion of the bead that had been linked to Riptoe’s life-force guiding him, he turned and Apparated to the place where the Sacred Hunt had taken place.

*

It had ended in a wood. It always did. If there wasn’t a wood nearby where the Hunt had begun, the magic would make trees grow.

Tom knelt down and let his fingers furrow gently across the ground, stroking the dirt, gathering up enough information that he felt it coded on his nails before he lifted his hand to his face.

The spells he had cast on himself long ago—wonderful things could be done with Parseltongue—translated the smells of the dirt into other smells as his tongue flickered out. Smells of magic, of skin, of blood. Tom bowed his head and let his memories sort through the smells until he remembered where he had encountered them.

And, more to the point, which faces had been associated with them.

Names swam into his mind, wavering like grass in wind, and then strengthening, solidifying. _Helios Rosier. Jeremy Burke. Alecto Carrow. Lilian Goyle._

Tom opened his eyes, and grimaced a little. Alecto Carrow was too highly-placed for him to touch; even an “accidental” death would cause people to ask questions about why the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the cousin of the Headmistress of Hogwarts had died so suddenly. But Tom laid another mark against her name in the ledger of his mind.

The others, however…

All of them were relatively low-status purebloods, children or spouses of families who hadn’t earned as much power as the Malfoys and the Carrows.

Tom smiled and stood, stretching a little. The smell of their magic was perhaps even a better link than the memories of Riptoe and the link to her that had formed through the bead. Tom turned his head and sniffed once, and he knew where his prey was. Rosier in London, probably Diagon Alley. Burke in the North. Goyle in Lincolnshire.

Tom crouched and then leaped into Apparition, letting the lure of Rosier’s magic pull him into the hunt.

And, crooning in his ears like a restless bird, his own hatred.

*

Helios Rosier, a squat wizard with a blond beard and a loud, annoying laugh, was having dinner in a small restaurant called the Offered Hand off Diagon Alley. Tom leaned, invisible in his Disillusionment Charm, against the stone wall and watched him through the lit windows, and smelled the foreign scent of Riptoe’s magic that hadn’t settled yet into the force of Rosier’s.

Tom pulled his own senses back when it seemed for a moment as if the restaurant’s defensive spells would react, and waited.

Rosier left the Offered Hand near seven, with a companion who waved once before he departed. Rosier walked alone towards the Apparition point, humming under his breath. Tom wondered that he never felt the predator’s gaze following him.

But, well. That was one of the minor reasons that purebloods were less worthy of Tom’s time than half-bloods and Muggleborns. They became complacent so easily.

Rosier didn’t even Apparate right away, although that might have been because harvested magic would need at least a week to sink fully into the harvesting wizard’s power and not cause instabilities in spells. Instead, he reached into his pocket for something that pinged as a Portkey against Tom’s senses, still humming.

Tom grabbed him.

Not with his hands, but with the curling tendrils of smoky magic that had been hanging about him since he got the message about Riptoe from Janet. The coils of cold strength lashed around Rosier’s throat—more powerful than many could have summoned, but still not nearly the full extent of Tom’s power—and the man gurgled as he groped frantically for the Portkey.

Tom let it activate, and pull him on the journey. It would be better, afterwards, if the Aurors knew that Rosier had traveled home.

They landed in a small room with pegs for cloaks all along the walls, and Rosier immediately rolled on the floor, still choking, this time reaching for his wand. Tom knelt down next to him and tightened the coils, just a little.

Rosier tried to scream as his windpipe cracked, but there was no sound.

“I know that you won’t understand what it’s for,” Tom told him calmly, sunk into the coldness that had overcome him the minute he’d seen that crushed red bead. “But this is vengeance.”

Rosier’s hand flapped around near the sheath on his arm that held his wand. Tom glanced at it, and got more gasping noises from Rosier as the small bones in his hand began to pop, one by one, not so close together that each sharp, exquisite pain didn’t show up by itself in Rosier’s consciousness.

Then Tom did the same with the other hand. Then the bones of his legs. Then his ribs. Then his arms.

Each time the pain would have rendered Rosier unconscious, Tom stabbed a spike of his own magic into the man’s brain and woke him up. By the end, Rosier was sobbing as best he could with his head turning back and forth, his eyes wide and unseeing. Tom thought of destroying them, too, but that would mean the illusion he had to weave afterwards would be that much more complicated. He left them alone.

“And now,” Tom said, and rested his hand above Rosier’s heart.

Rosier seemed to guess at the last moment what was going to happen to him. Perhaps part of his brain was working after all. He tried to croak something, tried to move his broken limbs to reach out and stop Tom.

He couldn’t.

Tom ripped Rosier’s magic free. What the purebloods had to do with the Sacred Hunt ritual and in combination, he could do by himself. He regarded the hovering, silhouette-shaped magic with a curled lip. It roiled, and looked and smelled like a chicken stew going off.

Floating on top of it, though, was a soft pearly film that represented all that was left of Cassandra Riptoe’s power.

Tom pulled a round crystal from his pocket and held it out. The magic zipped into it. Tom nodded. He never left any trace of harvested magic on victims he killed like this, in case someone suspected that someone had avenged the victims.

If he had a use for it, it was a use that the harvested victims agreed upon.

He stood and began to wave his illusions around Rosier. He would exist without his magic for a few more weeks, wide-eyed and grieving and suffering from the “magic-eating plague” that attacked certain people without reason. Then he would die.

Illusions made it look as though his misshapen hands, and limbs, were the result of tumors raised by the plague, and more spells bound his tongue so that he couldn’t tell anyone of what happened this night. After thinking about it, Tom did heal the crack in his windpipe. It wouldn’t do for this one symptom to differ from the ones that Tom had inflicted on other purebloods.

As he turned to depart, Rosier managed to croak, “You—you are a monster.”

Tom smiled over his shoulder. “I learned from lots of people.”

*

Previous experience with Rosier had told him that the man would have followed along with the harvesting process, but not chosen Miss Riptoe for himself. That meant that either Burke or Goyle had chosen the victim.

Tom was betting on Goyle. She had only married into the family, and she had had a half-blood grandmother, so she was a little less inbred than the rest.

Therefore, he went after Burke first, landing easily outside the wards of the house. He studied them, and smiled. They were blue and brilliant and linked to Burke’s mind. They would warn him instantly when someone began to manipulate them or attack them.

That was all right. Tom wasn’t here to do either.

He shut his eyes and breathed in and out for a long, still moment. Then he opened his eyes and reached out with the same touch that had ripped Rosier’s magic away from him.

He blanketed the wards, hovering above the lines of them the way an outstretched hand might hover above skin. Then he jerked his head.

The wards vanished.

A piercing scream reached him. The destruction of wards linked to him that way would have done—unfortunate things to Burke’s mind.

Tom crossed the black stone walls and then the house’s dark grounds in the direction of that scream, walking in a leisurely fashion. A hippogriff that Burke must have imported to guard the place started towards him in a slow stalk, and then seemed to feel the magic out and crawling around him. It reversed direction.

Tom chuckled and climbed the steps to the tower where Burke was waiting.

He had stopped screaming by the time Tom reached him, but only because, obviously, his throat was already torn up. He clawed mindlessly at his face, a young man with long stringy black hair, his eyes staring wide and distant and horrified at the far wall.

Not the way Tom would have chosen to kill, given how quick it was, but it had dealt with the dangerous wards, and given how well-known Burke was for hiding behind the wards, it would make Tom’s method of disposing of him plausible.

He ripped Burke’s magic free as he had with Rosier’s. The madman shuddered and then curled on the floor with a moan. Maybe it was a mercy, as annoying as the thought was to Tom.

Tom spent a few minutes arranging the tower, which was the center of Burke’s manipulation lab, with the glyphs and ingredients necessary to make it seem as if Burke had lost control of a magical experiment. All the ingredients that would have been required to do it were already there. Then Tom fed a trickle of his own magic back into Burke so that he would be plausibly drained instead of impossibly drained, and pulled the delicate matrix of Riptoe’s magic away from Burke’s so that he could store it in a second crystal.

The man had ceased sobbing by then and lay on his side, face emotionless. He would die before more than a few hours had passed, Tom judged. The twin losses of magic and sanity would give him no will to move when the ingredients began to release their poisonous fumes into the air.

Tom paused outside Burke’s house and closed his eyes for a few minutes. Even for him, depriving two wizards of magic and overcoming Burke’s wards was a bit of a struggle.

But not enough to prevent him from following the scent of Lilian Goyle’s magic.

*

“I want to make a bargain with you.”

Goyle’s voice was high with fear. Tom paused a few feet away from her house and waited in silence.

Goyle turned towards him. She was a woman so slender that “gaunt” would be the more appropriate word, with flyaway grey hair that she tried to compensate for by tucking it close to her head in a braid. She had dark eyes wide with fear even in the light of Tom’s _Lumos_ Charm.

“What bargain do you imagine you can make?”

“You’re tracking the people who harvested that Mudblood child.”

Tom nodded, seeing no reason to lie. Goyle’s eyes were already so wide that starlight gleamed off them. “And you cannot bring her back to life, so I repeat, what bargain do you imagine you can make?”

“I can give up her magic, and not report you to Minister Malfoy.”

Tom smiled. “You’ll give up her magic anyway. And Minister Malfoy doesn’t know a thing about what I’m doing here.”

Goyle backed up a long step and then visibly forced herself to halt. She stared at him. “But you can’t _kill_ people and get away with it!”

“We wouldn’t be here if you believed that argument.”

Tom had already seen the bright blue light of a trap ward flickering behind Goyle, which told him why she wanted to delay the confrontation. If she could hold him here long enough, then the ward would spread out and engulf everyone who didn’t have explicit permission from the owner of the land to be in the area. The nature of the ward meant that magical power was no defense against it. They would be held like fish in an impregnable net until the property owner came to dissolve the ward and retrieve them.

On the other hand, trap wards took time to form. And Goyle hadn’t launched this one soon enough.

“Malfoy _will_ figure it out!”

Tom sighed, shook his head, and struck.

This time, he didn’t try to rip out all of Goyle’s magic. Partially removing it from her body was sufficient; it hovered above her, a fluttering, moaning mass of sickly silver, and Tom took out a third crystal and gathered Riptoe’s stolen magic from her. Then he shoved the magic back into Goyle’s body, and she collapsed on the ground, weeping.

Tom watched her, and felt nothing. He glanced at the blue light. Still another ten minutes before the trap ward would form completely.

“I’ll—I’ll tell Malfoy,” Goyle said, and struggled to lift her head.

“If you could do that, I’m sure you would,” Tom said without much interest, and pulled out the fourth crystal he had brought along at the beginning of the evening. He felt a tug of resentment that he had to sacrifice it for this; originally, he had intended it to contain another situation. But he was the one who had acted immediately to hunt down Riptoe’s murderers instead of waiting until a few days hence, when he could still have pulled her magic away from them.

He set the crystal on the ground and crushed it with his foot. The white, buzzing glow inside it spread out and enveloped Goyle. She gave a single gasp and slumped over.

Tom watched the grey wisp of her expelled soul that trailed away into the night, then faced the being left before him. She had Goyle’s looks and her voice and would be able to summon a shred of her personality, and that was all that was needed for the fortnight that she would exist.

“You understand that you need to lock down the house and refuse all visitors?” Tom asked. It was best to lay out what he wanted in simple instructions that the doppelganger was capable of repeating.

“Yes.”

Huge, alien eyes fixed on him for a moment, then shimmered into the human darkness of Goyle’s. Tom nodded. “You will answer Floo calls, but refuse all requests for a personal meeting. Act as mysterious as you like. Do not communicate with anyone who tries to come into the house. Apparate if necessary. Locate yourself in a locked room two weeks from now.”

“Yes.”

The doppelganger stood up and walked into the house. Tom watched it go and then sighed and Vanished the pieces of broken crystal on the ground before he reached into his pocket and touched his own Portkey. Everything he’d done this night had exhausted him so badly that he didn’t want to try Apparating back to Fortius.

As the world swirled around him, Tom glanced back once at the Goyle house. He knew he would hear the news in a few weeks that Lilian Goyle had mysteriously vanished, with nothing left behind of her. The doppelganger would fade and crumble into mist within those two weeks, but anyone seeing it happen would know something was wrong, hence Tom’s instructions to it to locate itself in a locked room where no one would see the dissipation.

But for now, he had the three crystals infused with the strength of Riptoe’s stolen magic, and he had to give her the choice he gave every person murdered in these farcical hunts by purebloods.

*

As he strode towards the boundary wall of Fortius, a soft movement stirred the grass behind him. Tom kept walking, knowing that Belasha had come only to keep him company.

“ _What happened to the child whose magic you bear?”_

“ _She was killed._ ” Tom paused near House Gryphon’s clawed feet and stared upwards for a moment. Light shone through the windows. He could hear students’ voices if he listened for them long enough. He did, to remind himself who still lived and why he was doing this. “ _I took the magic from her murderers and killed them._ ”

Belasha moved her tail in approval, approval Tom was fairly sure he wouldn’t have obtained from most of his teaching staff. Of course, to a basilisk, enemies powerful enough to take on instead of flee from were better off dead. Food, if they could be. “ _And you did not bring their bodies back for me_?”

Tom smiled for a moment and rested his hand on her neck, feeling the scales sliding like armor beneath his fingers. There were few beings he cared for, given how weak many of them were, and what would happen if he allowed them inside his defenses. But Belasha was safe, in all senses. “ _I required their bodies to be found. Or, in one case, I got rid of it._ ”

“ _Waste._ ”

Tom laughed and finally felt able to move on from Gryphon House. His steps sure, he strode across the last steps to the boundary wall, and laid the crystals glowing with Riptoe’s magic in front of him. Belasha curled her neck above his head to watch.

As had happened when he did this before, the magic came out when he spoke her name. “Cassandra Riptoe.”

The swirls of brilliant white light filled the darkness for a moment, and then coalesced into a shape that was only a girl’s, Tom knew, because that was what felt familiar. She examined her glowing arms for a long moment, then stared at him.

“Where is my soul?”

“I don’t know,” Tom told her gently. “It’s the magic I capture, not the soul, because that is what the people who killed you took. I think your soul has probably passed on to whatever awaits after life.”

The girl considered that, turning her head to look at the wall for a moment. Then she turned back to him. “What do you want?”

The dead had none of the delicacies of the living. Tom was fine with that. “I wanted to ask if you would give part of your magic to protect the school. Some of the others who were killed and _harvested_ did that.”

This time, the shade of the girl’s magic drifted over to the boundary wall. She touched it with one “hand” and then sighed like a satisfied vampire. “I can feel how many there are.”

Tom nodded. “I would make them fewer if I could, but I can only prevent so many harvests, and then only by bringing the students to the school most of the time.”

“And these others agreed to help you because they are defending the people who might become victims like them.”

“Yes.”

“I was ten years old.”

“Yes.”

“ _Ten_!”

Her magic flared like a falling star, and something broke away from her, turning to face her. It looked rather like a shade of the same girl as she might have become a few years hence, perhaps thirteen, tall, with long hair falling down her back in a braid. She was made all of smoky grey, except for a few pale twinkles here and there in her skin.

“I will leave you this part,” said the pale Cassandra. “And the rest of me will go.”

She faded even as she spoke, and the smoky grey figure stepped forwards to stare into Tom’s face. Tom gave it—her—a shallow bow. She was similar to the shades who had stayed before, although darker than some of them. Cassandra had left more magic than most.

Then again, not all of them were outraged about their deaths. Some were only upset, others fearful, or outraged at him for killing their killers. Tom found himself quietly thankful that Cassandra had some sense.

And all the more furious that he would never learn what that sense could have done in the context of Fortius Academy.

“I can sense the others in the wall,” said the shade, and reached out to run the ghosts of fingers down the stones. She only brushed them with a corner of her power, but Tom felt the others in the wall stir and reach out to her, yearning. “But I don’t know how to join with them.”

“Let me cast the spell,” Tom said, and waited for her to nod before he raised his wand.

The phoenix feather in the core of the yew wand sang softly to him as it supported his weakened magic, a long, descending trill of utter sorrow, and the shade threw back her head and joined in. Tom could feel his own magic rising to that tune, and Belasha swaying behind him. It had never been this strong before. Cassandra had left even more magic than he’d thought, and would be a mighty addition to the school’s defenses.

The air seemed to shiver, and different wind currents collided. Then a flash of darkness consumed Tom’s vision, and the phoenix song abruptly ended. Tom threw up a hand before his eyes.

“ _She has joined with the wall_ ,” Belasha told him.

Tom lowered his hand and strained to see. Yes, a new grey current, the shade of darkened quartz, ran above the boundary spells protecting the wall. Hands reached out to grasp and hold it, and he heard the voices of other murdered children raised in shivering cries of welcome.

Cassandra was as at home as she would ever be.

Tom tucked his yew wand back into its sheath and stood silently for a second. Then he glanced at Belasha.

“ _What do you think happens after you die_?”

“ _You vanish._ ”

Tom nodded. Basilisks were practical about such things, or so he assumed, since he had only met one other than Belasha. And death was not an experience that he intended to have for many decades, in any case.

But as he walked away from the wall, he wondered if it would be so bad, should he have the chance, to dedicate his magic to the protection of others like him.


	7. Days of Firsts (Part One)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for all the reviews! (This chapter grew too long to write all at once, so I’ll post the second half of it next week).

“Welcome to Fortius Academy, Miss Granger.”

Hermione stood still while Professor Johnson stood calmly beside her, staring around at the buildings looming in every direction. It reminded her of some of the fantasy books she had read when she was younger, or a book picturing an idealized Athens. There was so much _marble_ everywhere, and some of the buildings looked like temples.

“It’s so beautiful,” she breathed, and the wand in the holster strapped to her forearm gave a little throb, the way it had been doing constantly in the week since she’d bought it.

“It is, isn’t it?” Professor Johnson gave her a pleased smile, and invited Hermione further into the Academy’s grounds with a sweep of her hand.

Hermione followed her eagerly, eyes still darting in various directions. There was water everywhere, too, and green grass, and a kind of subtle light that seemed to cling to and shine on everything although the sky was cloudy today. With every step, her heart lifted. Even if that was the result of some magic like Cheering Charms that she’d read about, it still made her thrilled to the depths of her soul to be here.

“Where are we going first?” she asked, when she became aware that Professor Johnson was leading her down a particular white stone path that seemed to stab through the heart of the grounds like a motorway.

“I thought you would like to see the Houses, since you’ll be spending most of your time in one of them come the start of the school year.”

“Yes, please!” Hermione became aware that she was almost skipping alongside Professor Johnson, and tried to make herself stop. She didn’t want to look so absurdly young. “Can I be Sorted today?”

Professor Johnson smiled at her. “That will wait until your first proper day of school. But there’s no harm in looking around and seeing where you might like to be.”

“I mean—I thought we were Sorted based on magical affinities? That means we don’t really get to choose, doesn’t it?”

“To an extent. But the Headmaster created his Sorting system only _based_ on Hogwarts’s system, not as identical to it.” Hermione stifled the urge to say that she knew that and she could read. “One thing he found particularly annoying is that the Hat Sorts based not just on personality traits, but the student’s family history and the like.”

“Why would it do that?”

“Most students do want to be Sorted into the same House as their family.” Professor Johnson paused next to a small white building with its door open, through which Hermione saw books. She immediately wanted to go inside, but she held still and looked into Professor Johnson’s face, because this seemed to be important. “On the other hand, the Hat seemed to consider their family history independently of that. Students’ own choices factored in, but not as much. In short, its decision was not _transparent._ Headmaster Riddle wanted to create a system that is.”

Hermione gnawed her lip, and nodded. “What House do _you_ think I’ll be in, Professor?”

Professor Johnson’s face relaxed, and she laughed a little. “The system is transparent, but I can’t tell what your magical affinity is without some testing, Hermione. I don’t know right now.”

Hermione just nodded again. She supposed she would have to wait like everyone else. At least she could explore the grounds beforehand. She pointed at the library. “Can I go in there and borrow a few books?”

“Of course.” Professor Johnson’s eyes narrowed a little. “You should be aware that the books are spelled so that Muggles can’t see or touch them, and if any damage happens to them, even something as minor as a drop of tea being spilled on them, they immediately return to the library.”

Hermione stared at her. “People don’t take care of books when they’re at the table?”

Professor Johnson laughed abruptly. “I don’t think we need to worry about you,” she said, and ushered Hermione into the most wonderful library she had ever _seen._

That was only partially because of the windows high on the walls, in the shape of small latticed curlicues and flowers, which ushered in soft cool draughts, or the deep wooden bookshelves that were carved with lions and dragons and gryphons that reached out protective claws towards the books. It was mostly because of the books themselves, which were about _magic._

Hermione darted from shelf to shelf, speechless with delight, not sure what she wanted to look at first. Professor Johnson followed her down the aisles, quietly pointing out the sections on Transfiguration, Charms, Arithmancy, History of Magic, and all the other subjects Hermione knew she would be taking at Fortius.

It was enough to make Hermione want to move right onto the grounds and stay there until term began on the last day of August.

When her arms were stacked, mostly with history books, she backed around a corner to see the top of a high shelf and tripped over a stool.

“Ouch!” said the stool.

Hermione blinked and turned around. Even in the magical world, she couldn’t imagine that a lot of the stools were enchanted to speak.

The stool turned out to be a black-haired boy who glared up at her accusingly. He _was_ sitting on a stool, but one that was barely high enough to keep his knees from folding up to his chin. On his lap was a huge leather book that Hermione immediately coveted, since it had a _moving ink drawing_ of a dragon flexing its claws open and shut.

“Who are you?” the boy demanded.

“This is one of our new students, Hermione Granger,” said Professor Johnson, coming around the corner of the shelf. She waved her wand, and the stack of books floated out of Hermione’s arms and hovered safely in the air. Hermione wanted to learn that spell, too. “And this is Harry Potter, one of our students who will be in your year, Miss Granger.”

Hermione smiled and held out her hand, glad that Professor Johnson had taken the books. Potter studied her intently for a second. Then he shook her hand.

“Are you here with a professor, too?” Hermione asked politely, only for the boy to look shifty.

“I’m on the grounds for the summer,” Potter said, after a quick glance at Professor Johnson.

“Oh? Are your family with you? Are you one of the Muggleborns whose families wouldn’t let them come? I’m Muggleborn. I’m the first in my family to have magic, imagine. It’s tremendously exciting. What do you think you’ll want to study first? What House do you think you’ll be in? How do they determine magical affinity, do you know?”

Hermione slowed down when she saw the bewildered look on the boy’s face, and blushed a little. “Sorry. My mother says I tend to talk too much. And ask too many questions.”

“I think asking questions is a _great_ thing,” said the boy, with emphasis that puzzled Hermione. He took another quick look at Professor Johnson, and then faced her again. “Well, I’m sort of Muggleborn. I grew up with Muggles. But my family didn’t want me to come, and it turns out my parents were a witch and wizard, so I came here.”

“They’re dead? Oh, no. I’m sorry. What happened to them?”

Potter hesitated again. Then he said, “Purebloods murdered them.”

Hermione clasped her hands to her mouth. Professor Johnson sighed. “I’m not sure that you needed to tell Miss Granger that, Mr. Potter.”

“Why? She asked!”

Hermione took a deep breath and sat down on the floor next to the little stool Potter was occupying. “Thank you for telling me,” she said, and then winced at the look Potter gave her. “No, really. I mean that. It’s important.”

“Why?” Potter canted his head to the side. He had the wildest hair. Hermione’s mum would tell him to hold still so she could brush it for him.

“Because Professor Riddle talked to me a little about how purebloods control the magical world and he wants to change that, but they haven’t threatened _me._ Except indirectly, when Mr. Malfoy came and talked about how I wouldn’t be happy at Hogwarts if I thought I was going to be as good as a pureblood and I had to learn to know my place. It’s good to remember how terrible they are, so we can rise up against them someday.”

Potter looked again at Professor Johnson, but this time, there was a sharp expression in his eyes. Hermione snorted and waved her hand. “Don’t worry, Professor Johnson is the one who told me about some of the plans they have for the uprising.”

Professor Johnson nodded and leaned against the nearest shelf, while Hermione’s books floated next to her. “The purpose of the school isn’t a secret to anyone who attends or teaches here, Mr. Potter, and it’s not something you need to guard.”

Potter blinked. “Okay.”

“What happened to your parents is awful,” Hermione said firmly, and reached out to shake Potter’s hand again. He seemed a little shocked, but he let her take it, and he let her go on holding it. “I hope that you’ll never have to go through anything like that again. But we know other kids _will_ , so we have to stop them.”

“Sometimes I just want to—hurt them all.”

It was a whisper. Hermione thought Potter might have been about to say _kill_ , but that wasn’t something that he would confess to a complete stranger.

She leaned forwards and said, “I know. So do I. But I think it would be better if we humiliated them and made them grovel the way they want _us_ to do.”

Slowly, a smile bloomed across Potter’s face. Hermione thought that he might look less wild if he smiled more often. “You know, Hermione,” he said thoughtfully, “I think we’re going to be very good friends, you and I.”

*

“You know very well that you carry the family honor.”

“Yes, Father.”

“I don’t want to hear any reports from Hogwarts about you behaving in a way unfitting of a scion of the Malfoy line.”

Draco breathed in slowly and looked up at his father. Lucius Malfoy wasn’t as tall as a few of the other people who worked at the Ministry, but to Draco, that didn’t matter. He couldn’t remember a time when his father hadn’t _loomed_ over his life. And that was right and proper and necessary. That was the only way he could preserve their legacy to pass it on, pure and untouched, to Draco. And now that the first day of his first year at Hogwarts had arrived, it was time for Draco to begin sharing the privilege and the burden.

“Yes, Father,” he said. “I promise that Professor Snape will find nothing to complain of in me.”

For a moment, he wondered if he should have said that, if he had been presumptuous in assuming that he would be Sorted into Slytherin. But Father smiled at him, and that was rare enough that Draco stood taller.

“Make friends with the right sort. Keep the Mudbloods in their place, but use grace and courtesy as much as you can. There is no reason to wield ugly weapons when beautiful ones will do.”

Draco bowed. “Of course, Father.”

“Magic embrace you, son,” Father murmured, and put his hand on Draco’s shoulder, steering him towards the Hogwarts Express.

Draco sneered at the piece of Muggle shit as he climbed aboard, reluctantly, turning only once to wave to his parents. He knew all the reasons they needed to move slowly in purging such Muggle influences from their world. There were still people around who had supported Dumbledore and would get upset if changes happened too quickly.

But he longed for the day when the worlds would be entirely separate and when they would have solved the problem of Mudbloods.

He made his way to an empty compartment with a snake marked on the door and stepped in, nodding to the older Slytherins who nodded back to him. None of them spoke. As the Minister’s son, it was up to him to speak first. Draco placed his trunk in the overhead compartment and glanced once out the window. He was in time to see his eagle-owl, Regent, lift off from the platform. Regent was the sort of royal creature who preferred to fly to Hogwarts.

Then Draco went in search of future allies.

*

“Can you believe that we’re finally on our way to _Hogwarts_?”

Ron shook his head dazedly at Victoria, his twin sister, as they looked out the window at their madly waving family. Victoria waved back, but Ron didn’t. He didn’t want to move too quickly. He kept feeling they were in a dream that would shatter if he did.

His family had been poor for a long time before his birth. He knew that. But he also knew that they were _purebloods_ , and that was what mattered.

Still, he had doubted whether they would be accepted to Hogwarts up until the moment when the owls with his and Victoria’s acceptance letters flew through the window. After all, Hogwarts was for the best of the best. Even Mudbloods could succeed there if they had good enough marks. Was blood enough to admit them?

It was. But Ron knew part of him would doubt until they got there.

The compartment door banged open, and Fred and George trotted in, grinning like madmen. Ron tried not to shrink back into his seat. Fred and George had always been allies for him and Victoria. They felt that, as the only two pairs of twins in the Weasley family, they should look out for each other.

But Fred and George had been at Hogwarts for two years now, getting good marks, and they were really funny, and everyone liked them. Ron wasn’t sure he could live up to the pressure.

Victoria didn’t care about that. She laughed at the sight of them. “Did you already get in trouble?”

“We might have got the toilet seat Ginny wanted,” George said.

“I think _you’re_ the one who came up with the idea to send her that toilet seat.”

Ron slouched back on his seat and watched as Victoria laughed and joked with Fred and George. She was Ron’s twin, but she was more like their brothers than she was him. Ron tried to tell himself it would be different at Hogwarts and they would be seen as different, but he couldn’t be sure, especially when they would both be in Gryffindor with Fred, George, and Percy.

The door of the compartment was still open from where their brothers had come in, and Ron saw a flash of blond hair in it. Someone leaned around the door and beckoned to him.

Ron glanced at his siblings, but none of them had noticed. He swallowed and stood, edging around Fred, who was describing Lee Jordan’s tarantula, and towards the person who waited there.

He wasn’t really surprised when it turned out to be Minister Malfoy’s son, who Ron had seen a few times in photographs in the papers. Malfoy smiled at him and extended his hand. “Hullo. I’m Draco Malfoy.”

“Ron Weasley,” Ron said, and shook Malfoy’s hand carefully. The last thing they needed was for him to bruise the Minister’s son or something and end up in the papers for that.

Malfoy pulled his hand back and gave Ron a long, slow, considering glance. Ron knew he turned red, but he stood there and let himself be looked at. It probably wasn’t that far off the way Malfoy looked at anyone.

“You’re the youngest son, right?” Malfoy sounded thoughtful. “You have a twin sister and then two younger sisters.”

“Yes, that’s right.” Ron bit his tongue to avoid saying something else, but he was stunned that someone had bothered to _notice._

Malfoy nodded. “Do you feel overshadowed by your older siblings?”

Ron jumped as if someone had cast a Stinging Charm on him, and then wished he hadn’t, as he watched Malfoy’s smile widen in amusement. But he took a deep breath and decided it would be stupider to ask how Malfoy had known that, or walk back into the compartment and pretend he’d never left. “Yeah, I do.”

“You have a brother who’s going into curse-breaking, and a brother who works with dragons, and a brother who’s a Gryffindor prefect, and two prankster brothers.” Malfoy was studying Ron as if he was reading writing carved on Ron’s bones. Ron had never felt so _seen_ before. “What do you want to know? What are you going to be known for?”

“I don’t know.” Ron’s bitterness rushed to the surface, and he found himself saying the thing he couldn’t to the others, not even Victoria, who was the one who got new girl’s things first. “Everything I own is hand-me-downs. It won’t matter if I get good marks because Bill and Charlie and Percy and Fred and George got them first. Even if I get on the Gryffindor Quidditch team, well, Charlie and Fred and George played there, too. And I’m not funny and I’m not popular and I’m not a prefect and I don’t know what to _do._ ”

“Does it matter which way you stand out? If your family is angry at you for it or not?”

Ron blinked. He’d been so consumed with thoughts of _never_ standing out that that question wasn’t one he’d thought about. “What do you mean?”

“It sounds to me as if you have ambition.” A small smile curled up the side of Malfoy’s mouth. “And there’s a specific House one goes into if they have ambition.”

Ron swallowed. _That_ had never occurred to him. One of the reasons he’d been so sure that he would never stand out was that he would be just another Weasley in Gryffindor. But what if he wasn’t in Gryffindor? What if he went into another place where there weren’t half-a-dozen of him?

“I don’t think I can, though. The Sorting is done by families.”

“Not just that,” Malfoy said quickly. “My father explained to me how it works. He’s been called to the school a few times, you know, to deal with a Mudblood being Sorted into the wrong House or a pureblood not being happy with their House placement. The Sorting also takes your desires into consideration. And your character. It Sorts by families because a lot of families _do_ have similar desires and personalities. Parents raise their children to value the things they value, after all. But if you want something different, if you want it badly enough to make the Sorting mechanism think about it…”

Ron felt a slow, delightful shiver creep down his spine. He’d never considered anything like that. But there was a lot of “never” going on today, and it didn’t mean it always had to be the same.

He did have one more thing to think about, though. “I want friends. Would anyone be friends with a Weasley who’s in Slytherin? A lot of the Dark pureblood families still despise us.”

“I would.”

Ron started and looked at Malfoy, who gave him a little nod that seemed to say he’d read the secrets on Ron’s bones and judged him worthy.

“Why, though?” Ron had to ask. His voice squeaked, and he cleared his throat and continued speaking. “I mean, you could be friends with _anyone._ The Minister’s son and all.”

“Perhaps,” Malfoy said, slowly, as if he needed to think about the right words before he said them, “I want to be friends with the first Weasley to be Sorted into Slytherin. Perhaps I think you’re different, and I want to know why.”

Ron felt his shoulders relax a little. That sounded like something he could believe. Not that he was special _yet_ , but he could be. If he got into Slytherin. If he proved that he was worthy of friendship with the Minister for Magic’s son.

“All right,” he said. “Bargain.” And he felt himself fill with a mad, rearing excitement, the kind he usually only got when he listened to Chudley Cannon games on the wireless.

He _was_ going to influence the Sorting-thing, whatever it was. He _was_ going to be in Slytherin. The first Weasley ever. The first different Weasley, the first one to be known for his House and his ambition.

He was going to be special.

*

 _That,_ Draco thought as he watched Ron almost float back to his compartment, _went very well indeed._

*

“Oof, watch where you’re going, won’t you?”

Harry blinked and turned around to face the boy he’d backed into. He had sandy hair and brown eyes and a disgruntled expression, and he was still sort of rocking where Harry had smashed into him when he backed up trying to see all the way to the top of the huge ball of crystal that sat in front of them.

“Sorry,” Harry said, and grinned a little at the boy. “I just wanted to see the top if I can. It must be hanging from _something,_ right? Something lowered it down.” After a month at Fortius, Harry knew that he wouldn’t necessarily be able to _see_ what had lowered it, but that didn’t stop him from looking at it.

The boy stared at him for a moment longer, then nodded and said, “Reasonable enough. Just don’t alter the queue.” He held out his hand. “Justin Finch-Fletchley.”

Harry remembered meeting someone with the same last name a fortnight or so back, but she had looked so sad that he didn’t like to ask if Justin was related to her. He just nodded and shook his hand. “Harry Potter.”

“I read something about Potters in _Hogwarts, A History…_ ”

“Yeah, a few of my ancestors were professors at the school. I’m a half-blood.” Harry studied the crystal globe again, wondering. He knew that it had something to do with their Sorting, but not what. The way students were Sorted at Hogwarts was kept secret from them, and it seemed Headmaster Riddle liked continuing part of the tradition at Fortius, too, even though the ways they were Sorted were different.

“Is this the queue where we stand to be Sorted?”

Harry grinned and glanced over. There was a tall dark-skinned boy hovering behind Justin. He already had his hand out, as if he assumed he would have to shake to get an answer. “Dean Thomas,” he introduced himself.

Harry shook his hand, too. “Yeah. I don’t know exactly how it happens, though. I’ve been here a month, and I’ve talked a lot to the Headmaster, but he wouldn’t tell me everything.”

“You’ve been here a _month_?” Thomas blinked. “Why?”

“My family didn’t want me to come.”

Harry was afraid that he would have to say more than that, but Thomas sighed. “Yeah. My mum was—she wasn’t going to forbid me to come, but when the Headmaster came and explained to her about the blood prejudice, she wasn’t impressed.”

“But you decided to come and study here anyway?” Finch-Fletchley asked. “Why?”

Thomas gave him a look that made Harry have to cough a little. “Are you mad? It’s _magic._ ”

Finch-Fletchley looked as if he didn’t appreciate the insinuation that he was mad, but a sharp clapping noise echoed through the room, which was huge, round, made of stone, and otherwise empty except for the huge crystal bubble. Harry turned towards the doors they’d entered by and found Headmaster Riddle walking in. He wore a set of deep blue velvet robes trimmed with silver that Harry had never seen before.

There was a silver snake gliding along in front of him. It was the wrong color for Belasha, or Harry would have thought she’d been shrunk somehow. The serpent was still _big,_ probably three meters or so, but Harry had to admit that he didn’t think any snakes were that threatening after seeing the basilisk.

“Why does he have a _snake_ with him?” Thomas whispered.

“You didn’t read up on his history?” asked a voice Harry would have known anywhere, and Hermione elbowed her way to the front of the queue, ignoring Finch-Fletchley’s huff, or probably not hearing it at all. “He can speak Parseltongue. The language of snakes,” she added, when Thomas’s blank expression made it clear that didn’t explain anything to him. “It’s his pet, or his servant. He can control it.”

Thomas still looked nervous, but then Headmaster Riddle began to speak, and although his voice wasn’t loud, he gained the attention of all twenty-five of them instantly.

“Welcome to Fortius Academy.” Riddle wasn’t smiling, but Harry could see the warmth in his eyes. The silver snake rose and began to sway back and forth, and Riddle reached down to run his fingers absently over its head. “All of you have chosen to accept the invitation to explore further into the magical world than most purebloods would want you to go. All of you have courage and strength aplenty. But I would wager that most of you don’t know your magical affinity yet.”

No one disagreed with him. A girl next to Hermione shifted around, looking as if she was about to ask a question, and then didn’t. Riddle nodded at her anyway, and turned to face the huge crystal globe.

“At Hogwarts, a Sorting Hat looks into the mind of each student and chooses their House based on their personalities, their own desires, and the history of their families,” Riddle said calmly. “Fortius bases Sortings on magical affinity primarily. You will, of course, learn spells based on the kind of magic that you resonate with, as well as the element. But research has also shown that wizards and witches feel more comfortable around those with their magical affinity. And, of course, it is easier to cast as large ritual circles with those of the same affinity.”

“Why do we need to do that?” whispered Hermione, but Harry ignored her. He thought he knew. Large ritual circles meant more powerful spells, which meant more powerful _weapons._ Harry wouldn’t be surprised if Riddle was making revolutionary covens within the Houses.

“A reminder of the affinities and the Houses,” Riddle said, and reached down to the snake at his side. It hissed a little, and reared up higher to meet him. A silver light spread down from Riddle’s wand to encompass it, and began to writhe and overlay the snake with different shapes.

“The House of the Gryphon represents earth, Transfiguration, and defensive magic.” For a moment, the snake was the proud creature with the eagle’s head and lion’s body that Harry had walked past each day for the last month on his way to the library.

“The House of the Phoenix represents fire, Charms, and the magic of creation.” The illusion around the snake grew wings and flames, and stretched both of them out as if to take flight in that moment.

“The House of the Dragon represents water, Divination, and offensive spells.” The snake snapped back to looking almost like itself, but this time with wings made of silver light and a crest of lifting horns on its head.

“And finally, the House of the Pegasus represents air, Herbology, and mind magic.” The wings of the dragon grew feathers, and the serpent was surrounded by the illusion of a wise, proud, rearing horse.

Riddle gestured with his wand again, and the illusion faded. The serpent coiled around his leg and flicked out its tongue as it watched them. If it was saying something to Riddle, then Harry couldn’t hear what it was.

“Are there equal numbers in every House, sir?” Hermione asked, sounding as if she thought they would need the answer to do well on some homework.

Riddle smiled at her. “An excellent question, Miss Granger.” Harry thought Hermione _could_ have done without the preening that she did then. “The answer is that the numbers will be _roughly_ equal overall. But each year usually contains uneven numbers.” He looked around. “Any other questions?”

The other students in the room were exchanging glances, though, and looked breathless with excitement. Harry was himself. He’d kept changing his mind as he read through the books in the library and learned more about elemental magic and the different kinds of spells and fields that existed. Sometimes he thought he knew for sure what House he would be in, and then he would feel he had no idea and it was impossible to know.

“Very well.” Riddle whirled towards the crystal globe and cast without speaking, a blue spell that launched itself from his wand and straight into the middle of the globe.

It fractured with a noise like music, and spirals of white light whirled up from inside it. Harry stared. He had seen nothing like this at Fortius so far, read about nothing like it in the library.

The spirals separated, and Harry saw silver flame dancing around each of them. And then they began to zip towards each student, pursuing zigzag paths and going in different directions, so Harry couldn’t tell just by watching where any one of them was going to move.

The first one he saw came to a stop chose to hover in front of Finch-Fletchley. The other boy looked like he was holding his breath while the spiral changed shapes. Then it melted into the same silver color that the illusion around Riddle’s snake had, and became a brilliant, hovering phoenix.

Finch-Fletchley laughed in what sounded like pleasure, and Harry turned around to find some of the other students already had silver animals in front of them. Phoenixes settled on shoulders, winged horses bowed their heads and scraped their hooves, dragons reared with their wings spread out, and gryphons clapped their wings together.

Restless, Harry turned back to find his own beast, wondering why it was taking so long to find him—

And discovered a white spiral hovering right in front of him. Harry caught his breath, and then had to let it out again. His heart was racing frantically. He clenched his hands and tried not to feel as if he was about to vomit.

As he watched, the spiral surged through several different shapes, before it grew feathered wings, and a gryphon landed in front of him and bowed.

Harry smiled. He hadn’t known where he was really going to go, but he had suspected Gryphon House was a strong possibility. The spells he’d liked best when he read the descriptions of them in the books were defensive ones. And he _really_ wanted to learn to become an Animagus, so it would be great if he had an affinity for Transfiguration.

He looked around and found a winged horse in front of Thomas and a dragon gazing into the eyes of the girl who had stood on the other side of Hermione. But where was Hermione?

“Harry!”

Harry snapped his head up and saw Hermione with a silvery phoenix on her shoulder, pecking gently at her hair as if it was preening her. Harry grinned and trotted over to her, with the gryphon following him. “So you’re going to be good at spell creation, then?”

“I hope so! It sounds by far the most fascinating thing we’ll learn—”

Hermione gasped as the phoenix faded into white mist and hovered around her shoulders. Harry felt it himself in the next moment as his gryphon became the same kind of aura that he had seen around Angelina Johnson when she questioned Riddle on the day he’d arrived at Fortius. There were hints of claws and feathers and a beak here and there, but for the most part, it was a formless mass.

But _warm_. The magic lingered around him, holding him close. Harry knew without asking that if he needed it to, it would lash out in his defense, or alert him to danger. He beamed.

“Your beast of the Sorting will become a permanent protector to you,” Riddle said clearly, evidently because he thought that some people weren’t as smart as Harry and Hermione and might need the reassurance. “It can combine with the magic of others in your House to double your protection and help you in ritual magic, as well as increase the potency of your spells. Of course, you _will_ be expected to stand on your own and not rely on its extra strength all your life, only in your first year when your spellcraft is unskilled.”

Riddle swept all of them with his gaze, and his face was radiant with pride. Harry found himself straightening his spine. He knew he wasn’t the only one. Riddle _believed_ they could be strong and make a difference, and that was enough to make Harry believe it, too.

Riddle smiled, then. “Four Dragons, six Phoenixes, eleven Gryphons, and four Winged Horses,” he says. “I look forward to great things from all of you.”

And for the first time—stronger even than when he had picked up Riddle’s wand or got his own—Harry was sure that he could, too.


	8. Days of Firsts (Part Two)

“If you will escort the first-years into the Great Hall, Minerva.”

That was the chore Headmistress Carrow always assigned her. Minerva knew why. It did the young purebloods good to see that a half-blood witch was assigned to a place of service. And it presumably did the others good, as well, if they had any illusions about their place in their new world.

“Yes, Headmistress,” was all Minerva said, and she dipped her head a little as she went down from the Grand Staircase to meet the young students that Wilhelmina had guided in on the little boats. Some traditions of Hogwarts were still observed, although the group of students this year, at seventeen, was smaller than most had been in Minerva’s youth.

She met Severus on the way, which was unusual. Most of the time, he would already have been sitting at the Head Table, as distant from the students as he could get.

“Minerva,” Severus said in a slow drawl. “On the way to bring in the little darlings?”

“As the Headmistress asked of me, yes,” Minerva said, and brushed past him.

She thought she felt something cling to her robes for a second, but when she stopped and glanced down at them, there was nothing there. She shook her head and kept walking. Hogwarts was so full of small tricks—notches in the steps that weren’t always present, the ghosts of mice, lingering effects of prank spells—that she didn’t try to deal with them unless they caused a visible effect.

And speaking of visible effects…Minerva rearranged her face in the stern, welcoming smile that she was known for. She must let no true sign of what she felt escape her vigilance, lest she be driven from the post where she could do the most students the most good.

*

Severus stared at the colors rotating over the smooth globe that Riddle had given him. It looked to be made of obsidian, although it was faceted and had a heart that could be seen into if one turned the ball enough. Riddle had said that Severus wouldn’t have to touch someone with the globe to measure their strength, but Severus hadn’t trusted that appraisal, not fully, so he had brushed the globe against Minerva’s robes as she passed.

This was a test only. Severus wanted to see how the globe functioned, to make sure that he could use it in the Great Hall as Riddle had demanded.

The colors snapped together after a long moment of rotating, which had seemed to create a second globe above the first. Severus saw the unmistakable figure of a gryphon there, which wasn’t a surprise. With Minerva’s strength in Transfiguration and her earth-like stolidity, she would undoubtedly have been Sorted into the House of the Gryphon if she had gone to Fortius.

Severus slipped the globe into his robe pocket and turned to sweep towards the Great Hall.

*

“Welcome to Hogwarts,” Minerva said, and continued the familiar speech describing the strengths of the Houses and some of the ancient traditions of the school, while her gaze slid critically over the students standing in the anteroom in front of her.

Red hair—the second set of Weasley twins, of course. Minerva concealed a sigh. She could only hope that they were less mischievous than their older brothers, and wouldn’t cause her too many troubles in her position as Head of their House.

Blond hair. Minerva gave a semi-deep nod to the Minister’s son. Young Malfoy looked at her with a pinched, superior expression that made him resemble the worst combination of his parents.

She let her eyes roam over the other children, all expected. Pansy Parkinson, standing with her nose halfway up an invisible arse. The Crabbe and Goyle sons, behind Draco with the kind of stolid implacability that attended their families as they attended the Malfoys. Another blond head, deeper in color this time, that marked the latest Smith.

Many of them would go to Slytherin. There was only one Muggleborn and two half-bloods among them.

Maybe that was for the best. Maybe it would be for the best if those children accepted the shadow the pureblood world would cast over them early on, and accepted, too, that they would have to get their inferior education from the Fortius Academy instead of Hogwarts.

 _Merlin knows,_ Minerva thought, as she turned and opened the doors into the Great Hall with a wave of her wand, _we have little enough to offer them._

*

Severus tapped the obsidian globe resting in his lap, out of sight beneath the table, with two fingers the minute the first of the disorganized jumble of eleven-year-olds stepped into the Great Hall.

There was a long, soft hum, which Severus was fairly sure he was the only one to hear. The Hall was more silent than it was most of the time, but no place filled with this many children could be _entirely_ so. There were whispers zipping back and forth from mouth to mouth, and the clink of coins changing hands, as people bet on how many Slytherins there would be this time, and how many Gryffindors.

The number of the latter shrank from year to year.

Severus sneered a little when he caught sight of two gingers trailing along at the back of the pack. _Well, there will be two more this year, anyway._

His eyes found those of Draco Malfoy, who was staring at him with the kind of expectation of deference that his father regularly did. Severus made sure to nod a little. He had a lie all prepared about why he couldn’t be more open when they were in front of an audience, but Draco didn’t seem to be interested in Severus, instead turning back to the Sorting Hat sitting on its stool with a look of expectation on his face.

The Hat began its latest song, one Severus didn’t bother paying any more attention to than he usually did. The idea of tradition and the like that the Hat supported was one he had ignored for years because he despised it, and that he ignored now because he had a more important task.

The students of Hogwarts would not be Sorted by magical affinity as those of Fortius were. But the globe that Riddle had given Severus could still discern what those magical affinities would have been.

And record them, so that Riddle could have a better idea what strengths his future enemies had.

It was so ingenious that Severus wondered why Riddle hadn’t tried to get someone on the inside in Hogwarts so that he could find out before. Perhaps the magic that could do the recording hadn’t been perfected yet.

Perhaps he had simply not known whom he could trust.

Severus picked up his goblet of water and brought it to his lips, wetting them only, as the first girl, a Bones, went beneath the Hat, and was assigned to Hufflepuff. He approved of the slowness of Riddle’s pace, and not only because the man had once been a Slytherin like Severus.

It meant the revenge would be slower, too, and to be savored.

Severus wanted them to _suffer._

*

Draco had thought the Hat might speak to him, the way it seemed to have spoken to some of the others, especially Longbottom, whom it had hesitated over for a long time before it sent him to Gryffindor. But the Hat only touched his head briefly and squealed, “SLYTHERIN!”

Draco smiled a little as he sat down at the table politely clapping for him. He had known he would be in Slytherin, the way all his ancestors had been, the way Crabbe and Goyle were. The way the majority of their year would be. Daphne had gone there, too, and Pansy would come, and Theodore, and Blaise. Millicent Bulstrode seemed to have been hoping for it, but the Hat had sent her to Ravenclaw. Draco was viciously, silently pleased about that. Bulstrode was a _half-_ blood. No point in aspiring beyond her station.

His eyes went to Ron, though. Draco thought their conversation on the train had had an impact, but was it enough of one?

Ron’s face was pale, which made his freckles stand out like dots of blood. He darted one glance at Draco, then away again, as if he didn’t want anyone to see where he was looking. Draco raised his eyebrows a little. Perhaps Ron had better political instincts than Draco had thought.

“What are you looking at, Draco?”

That was Pansy, sitting beside him now, looking as happy as she ever got. Her older sister, sitting down the bench, gave her one cool, thoughtful glance, and looked away. Draco lamented that he wouldn’t get to know Cygnet Parkinson well before she left Hogwarts, since she was already a sixth-year. From what his parents had said, she was better company than Pansy.

“The people who might get into Slytherin,” Draco said truthfully.

Pansy sniffed. “I can’t imagine there’s going to be many surprises. The worthy purebloods will come here—”

The Hat shouted Smith for Hufflepuff, and Draco raised his eyebrows at her. “You were saying?”

“Well, Smith is descended from a Founder, of course he’ll go to the Founder’s House.” Pansy flicked her fingers and dismissed the contrary evidence for her theory. “And of course it’s no surprise where the Weasleys will go.”

Draco bit his lip, and looked up as Ron walked forwards and settled under the Hat. There were only him, his twin sister, and Blaise left.

 _Come on, Ron,_ Draco thought, narrowing his eyes. _Show me what you’ve got._

*

 _Slytherin,_ Ron thought the instant the Hat settled on his head.

There was a long pause, during which Ron thought he felt someone moving around in his thoughts. It was bloody disconcerting. But the Hat didn’t shout anything one way or the other, so Ron squared his shoulders and did his best to accept the sensation.

 _You would do well in Gryffindor,_ the Hat murmured, its voice ancient and creaky. _That is where your family expects you to go, I believe. And a pureblood might usually do well in Slytherin, but you might also encounter prejudice because of the policies that your family supported until recently._

Ron felt something freeze in him. _Does everything have to be about my bloody family?_ he demanded. _Am I not allowed to have anything_ I _want? Or do you just do what people’s parents want?_

The Hat gave a chuckle that bounced off the sides of Ron’s skull. _I suspect that I have made many decisions that students’ parents would not approve of._

_Then you can make this one. I want Slytherin. I want a place that my ambitions can thrive. Where I can do what I need to do to distinguish myself._

Another silence, and Ron could hear the rising murmurs that were the voices of people wondering what the hell was happening, and why the Hat was taking so long to Sort yet another Weasley. Ron’s spine grew stiffer as he thought about that. He would _prove_ that he wasn’t just another Weasley. He would prove that he was _different._

 _You should know,_ the Hat said abruptly, _that if you want to go to Slytherin because of the interaction on the train I can see in your memories, then young Mr. Malfoy was not telling you to enter that House out of mere concern for your welfare._

Ron grimaced. _I didn’t think he was. I know that he probably wants to use me somehow. Dad says all the Malfoys are like that. But it’s perfectly possible to get along with the Malfoys and still do what you want. It’s what Fred and George do._

The Hat gave a chuckle that was aloud this time, and Ron heard more than one person jump. He wished he could see it, but the Hat’s brim was too low over his eyes, and he couldn’t look up or see anything on their faces.

 _Very well. I think that you are better-suited to your new House than any other Weasley I’ve seen recently. Do well in_ —“SLYTHERIN!”

*

Severus felt his eyebrows fly up as the Weasley boy put the Hat on the stool and stood to face the audience. The _silent_ audience. If any other Sorting had caused this level of consternation at Hogwarts, Severus couldn’t remember it.

Minerva was staring with her lips parted, which was the equivalent of a dropped jaw for her. She shook her head sharply a second later and actually turned and addressed the Sorting Hat. “Have you gone senile?” she demanded.

The Hat gave a long, wheezy-sounding chuckle. Severus let his eyes pass back and forth between it and the Weasley boy, who was marching towards the Slytherin table. They sat stunned, not clapping, but Weasley didn’t look stunned. Neither did Draco, who was smiling in the self-satisfied way of someone who had achieved something he wanted.

 _Draco._ Severus held back his sigh. _Of course he would tamper with something like this, in the name of collecting allies._

Draco had just begun to clap lightly when the Hat said, “I am the Sorting Hat. I know where to send students.” It flapped its brim up and down. “And I have two more of them to Sort, so bring them to me.”

Weasley slid into the seat next to Draco, and exchanged a bright, secret smile with him. Severus wanted to groan, seeing it. Just the thing he needed, a Weasley under his watch and conspiring with the Minister’s son.

“You’re wrong!” That was the older Weasley twins, yelling as one, standing up at the Gryffindor table. Severus spared them a single glance, more to monitor the position of the two other Weasleys in the room than to see what the twins were doing. Percy’s mouth was narrow and lined. The girl, Ron Weasley’s twin sister, simply seemed stunned. “No Weasley—”

“Has _ever_ been in a House other than Gryffindor! Put our—”

“Brother back, now!”

Minerva’s back went up, probably because she found students yelling in the Great Hall more offensive than the thought of losing a “guaranteed” Gryffindor to Slytherin House. “Mr. Weasley, Mr. Weasley, sit down, _now_! The Hat makes the final decision.”

“Thank you, Professor McGonagall.” The Sorting Hat sounded smug.

Severus snorted under his breath as he saw the look of loathing Minerva gave the thing, but she turned her back on it and gestured the other two students left in line, Victoria Weasley and Blaise Zabini, forwards. Luckily, there were no surprises there. Weasley-Ella went to Gryffindor, and Zabini to Slytherin, as expected.

Nine new Slytherins, the same count as Severus had anticipated, although the members were a bit different. He had thought Millicent Bulstrode would be the ninth, not Weasley. He sipped at his water as Minerva swept the Hat off the stool and Headmistress Carrow rose to her feet, eyes glittering.

All the students immediately shut up and paid attention. You did, when Hogwarts’s Headmistress spoke. She had been known to torture those who didn’t.

Severus mentally contrasted it to the way Headmaster Dumbledore had handled matters when he was a student here, and snorted to himself again. Well, yes, Dumbledore had been less intimidating, and he would never have resorted to torture—except for the cute little speeches he liked to give that students would spend hours trying to riddle apart later. Severus had known there was no meaning behind them from the time he was a second-year student, but precious little could convince other Slytherins of that.

“Welcome to your future,” Carrow said, her dark eyes passing slowly back and forth across the tables, as if marking the way every student sat or tilted their heads back to look up at her for signs of sedition. “You should take your schooling _seriously._ That means adhering to the rules of courtesy and pride, among other things. Take pride in your heritage. _Understand_ it. Take pride in the heritage of your House.” She leaned forwards, hands resting lightly on the table. “And _know the rules._ ”

The words sank into a silence as deep as a pool at the foot of a waterfall. There was no applause as Carrow sat down and gave the nod that would signal the house-elves to begin serving the feast. That was the way Carrow liked it, though. She thought too many signs of enthusiasm, other than for torturing Mudbloods, meant people were planning something against the regime.

Severus glanced down at the obsidian sphere in his lap again, and smiled slightly as it flashed the image of a dragon. So it had recorded the magical affinities of all the students Sorted today, and agreed that Blaise Zabini would be Sorted into the House nearest to Slytherin if he was attending Fortius Academy.

Severus expected to see Riddle tonight, and to receive another sphere that he could carry around to analyze the magical affinities of older students. _Know your enemy._

“What are you looking at, Severus?”

He turned to face Filius, slipping the obsidian sphere into his robe pocket with a slight motion of his hand. “My future, with the most students Sorted this year under my care,” he said, with a slight grimace. “And a Weasley to boot. Who knows what mess _that_ is going to cause?”

Filius sighed and nodded. “And I will have a half-blood to console,” he said, turning to look at Millicent Bulstrode. Severus saw that she was sitting at the edge of the Ravenclaw table, her arms folded and her shoulders turned to those of her Housemates who were trying to talk to her. “I hope, in time, that she can accept what happened is for the best.”

Severus returned some light answer, and began eating. It took him more time than it should have to realize that Minerva had not returned.

*

Minerva stared at the Sorting Hat as she held it, turning it around and around in her hands. Technically, she should have returned it to the Headmistress’s office right away, and then gone to the Feast. But she didn’t know how to bypass the new ward Headmistress Carrow had set at the end of the corridor, and although she could have guessed, or gone and asked the Headmistress before she left the Great Hall, standing here until the Feast was done would both outline her dedication to the task and convey the impression that she was a half-blooded idiot to Carrow—something particularly good to convey right now.

The main benefit, of course, was that she didn’t need to go back into the Great Hall and stare at the paltry three first-years she would be nurturing this year. For the first time in the school’s history, there would be a bedroom with a single student in it. Victoria Weasley, in this case.

“Why did you do it?” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Why did you—why have you _gone along_ with what they asked you to do, these last few years?”

She knew she could be in danger if the Sorting Hat reported this conversation to Headmistress Carrow. But the Hat had never willingly spoken to her. Minerva was as safe as she could be.

“I Sort where students belong,” said the Hat, and yawned with a noise like a Muggle student’s satchel being zipped. “I Sort what you give me. And the majority belong in Slytherin. Mr. Weasley went to the right House for him.”

Minerva closed her eyes. She knew, of course, that purebloods like Lucius Malfoy would like to see Gryffindor House, and probably Hufflepuff, destroyed altogether. The traditions that flowed from Godric Gryffindor and Helga Hufflepuff were both inconvenient for them and more likely to turn students against Minister Malfoy’s administration.

But eliminating them completely would risk the wrath of older purebloods who had been in those Houses. Starving them of students, however, was acceptable.

“Has it occurred to you,” the Hat abruptly demanded, “that I can do nothing else with the quality of students I have?”

Minerva looked at it again. It was the first time she could remember the Hat saying something that wasn’t in response to a direct question. “I don’t know what you mean. All of our students have the magical strength and marks to attend Hogwarts.”

“Perhaps I should have said _quantity_ ,” the Hat said. “Perhaps I should have said _blood._ ”

And then it closed its brim, and no matter what other questions Minerva asked, it wouldn’t answer her.

In the end, she did stand there until Headmistress Carrow came back to the gargoyle, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t hungry anyway.

*

Tom stood at the window of his office, gazing across the expanse of Fortius’s grounds, and noting the softly glowing lights behind many of the windows. He smiled a little. Classes would begin later than usual tomorrow morning, both to give time for a tour of the school for those who might not have seen everything yet, and to give some recovery time for those who stayed up late tonight, chattering to and learning the names and natures of their new Housemates.

Tom stepped back and reached for the jar of Floo powder on his mantel. It was time to go to Hogwarts and exchange obsidian orbs with Severus. At least, it was if the man had done as Tom had instructed. It would be interesting to see how well he fared in this first test of his loyalty.

A low noise sounded from behind him. It was the thready edge of a growl, and Tom halted, his fingers digging into the jar’s sides. The wards on Fortius should have held every threat out that could produce a noise like that.

“Don’t move, Riddle.”

Tom continued gazing straight forwards, but he reached out with his mind to touch a connection he usually didn’t call upon. Although their natures and magical affinities were not close enough to bond as wizard and familiar, he did have a tie to Belasha because of his Parseltongue magic. She would come if she sensed he was in danger.

The noise didn’t repeat itself, but the man slowly circled in front of him. Tom was grateful for the lack of speed, in fact. It gave him more time to reach out to Belasha and stir her from the sleep that had consumed her this afternoon after she’d devoured two oxen.

The man finally came to a halt in front of Tom, close enough for Tom to see his face—or he would have been able to, if a deep cloak hadn’t shaded it. The man’s fingers played lightly across the wood of a rowan wand. That made Tom blink despite himself. Rowan wood, deeply involved in protection against Dark magic, normally wouldn’t answer the will of a wizard who had broken in wanting to harm the children or torture someone.

But the sight of the unusual wood, combined with the noise from beforehand, made Tom reach out and send a soothing emotion to Belasha, asking her to halt without the words that he couldn’t send from this distance.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Mr. Remus Lupin?” he asked.

The man started, and the thin growl Tom had heard before broke out again. Then he lifted his left hand and swept back the hood of his cloak, keeping the wand in his right hand trained on Tom.

Tom had thought he’d known what to expect, since he had relatively recent photographs of Lupin from some of his Ministry spies, but it turned out that he hadn’t after all. Lupin’s hair had gone entirely silver, an odd metallic color that didn’t look like the grey of age, but like the fur of a wolf in winter. His eyes, likewise, were entirely golden, as if he stood permanently in a flow of light that touched only them, and his ears slightly pointed. He reminded Tom of pictures Muggles painted of elves.

“How did you know?” Lupin demanded in a voice several octaves lower than a human wizard’s.

“It’s rare that someone who could growl would manage to pass through the wards without alerting me,” Tom said, keeping his eyes on Lupin’s. His hand tingled with the urge to grasp his wand, but he kept it still. At the moment, reaching for any weapon would be one of the stupidest things he could do, and he knew it. “And I knew that once I removed Harry from the home where the Ministry had placed him, I would probably be seeing you.”

Lupin continued to stare at him unwaveringly. “You might as well say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say some _thing_ that could growl like that. And call Harry by his last name. I know that’s what people like you do.” Lupin’s lips pulled back so that Tom could see teeth he thought had been deliberately sharpened for the intimidation factor.

“No, I do believe that werewolves are people,” Tom said. He kept his voice as mild as possible, and stared mostly at Lupin but partially off to the side. “And Harry is Harry to me, although of course I’ll have to call him by his last name in class. He reminds me a lot of myself in childhood.”

Lupin sniffed visibly. Tom controlled any reaction, and waited. Then Lupin said, “You aren’t lying.”

Tom shook his head. “I am not. I found that Harry had been placed with the Muggle relatives of his mother, and they had abused him. They—”

Lupin flowed towards him, so fast that he looked like a current of visible air instead of a person. Again, Tom kept his hand away from his wand, and let Lupin grip him around the shoulders and slam him back into the wall.

He also kept to himself the doubt that he might not have been able to compete with Lupin’s speed even if he’d wanted to.

“You’re lying this time,” Lupin said, his voice near enough to Tom’s ear to remind him of nightmares he’d had as a child, of something snarling beside his bed in the dark. “I _know_ it. The purebloods knew what I’d do to their children if they harmed Harry.”

“They probably thought you would never find out,” Tom said, tilting his head back a little to get his windpipe as clear as possible. Sharpened nails rested against his neck, enough to create dents in his skin. “And they thought Harry would go to Hogwarts this time, and be so grateful for the magical rescue that he would never mention his time with his relatives.”

“You believe that. You don’t know for sure.”

Tom hadn’t known that a werewolf’s nose could pick up subtleties like that, which irritated him. Had the people reporting to him not known it, either, which would mean a failure of their diligence, or had they left it out of their reports because they didn’t believe it was important, which would mean a failure of their intelligence?

Lupin snarled softly, and Tom reminded himself that he would figure it out later. He sighed and said, “No, I don’t know it for sure. But there isn’t any other reason I can think of for someone who plays the game like Lucius Malfoy to have left him with abusive Muggles when he knew about your threat.”

A long moment passed in which the loudest sound was Tom’s heart in his ears and the panting of what felt like a large beast next to him. Then Lupin released him.

Tom let his feet settle on the floor and spent a moment smoothing out his robes. Then he looked up to see Lupin prowling back and forth in front of him. There was the slight rasp of nails on the floor that meant Lupin was probably barefoot underneath his robes. Tom didn’t bother trying to confirm it.

“Why did they want to control Harry that way?” Lupin asked, his voice a tired rasp without the growl.

“He has power,” Tom said. “He didn’t believe magic existed, but he used my own wand to throw me across the room when he was simply _willing_ it to happen. I think that Malfoy and whoever else was in charge of the placement wished to control him and his magic in the future. Perhaps for a marriage, perhaps for a harvesting.”

Lupin’s mouth opened, and yes, his teeth had definitely sharpened, although perhaps by his transformations rather than magic. “I _see_ ,” he said. “That will not happen to Harry.”

“No, I agree. Legally, he’s a student of Fortius now and he won’t be able to be removed—”

“No, it will not happen because Malfoy will be _dead._ ” Lupin turned towards the fireplace.

“Consider something, Lupin,” Tom said, and he knew it was his bored tone that made the werewolf glance back at him. If he had sounded angry or anxious, Lupin would probably already have vanished through the flames. “If you murder Malfoy, or infect his child, then the British purebloods will unite against you more than you already have. You won’t be able to play the role that I hope you’ll play.”

“What do you mean?”

“The role in Harry’s life that I’d hope and think he wanted you to play, as a dear friend of his parents. And someone who can help him, and other students if you’re agreeable, prepare for a future life as participants in this war we find ourselves fighting.”

Lupin’s nostrils flared again. “You’re a manipulator to your core.”

Tom shrugged, although it annoyed him that his mannerisms and deflections presumably wouldn’t work on Lupin unless he learned a charm to conceal his scent. “True enough. But what I said is still true. Malfoy placed Harry in an abusive household, he is safe here now, and I think he would prefer you alive and in his life than on the run.”

Lupin tilted his head, making it look like his neck was longer than normal and conveying the air of a wild predator at the same time. “And I suppose that you would manage to house someone who is still a fugitive in most of Britain without running into legal issues of your own?”

Tom snorted. “We can conceal that you’re you from everyone but Harry and perhaps some of the professors. We’ll create an alternate identity for you that you can interact with the other students in.”

Lupin studied him slowly. Tom didn’t think it was his imagination that Lupin’s eyes lingered on his throat and the curve of his neck, but he tried not to let it bother him.

“Will your other professors go along with this? Will the other students of your school feel at ease being taught by a werewolf?”

“My professors are as committed to the battle as I am. And we’ll introduce our students one by one. But you should remember, Lupin, that most of our students are Muggleborns or Muggle-raised half-bloods. They often didn’t have the chance to learn the prejudice against werewolves that you’re worrying about.”

Lupin studied him for a moment longer, and then nodded. Some essential tension fled from his body when he did, and although Tom could still see the pointed ears and the silver hair and the golden eyes and the sharp teeth, he looked more human than he had.

“I’d like to see Harry again,” Lupin said quietly. He paused. “And Sirius.”

Tom smiled. “It will take more work to free Mr. Black from his house arrest than it does to accept you here. But I have thought of some plans. He could have much to contribute to us.”

“Besides a way of keeping a powerful half-blood enamored with your school?”

“That, too.”

Lupin gave a laugh that sounded like the yelp of a rabbit caught in mid-leap. “Well. Fine, Riddle. I don’t like you, but compared to the simmering hatred that I feel for the majority of wizards and witches, that’s practically a compliment.”

Tom took that in stride. He knew that the only people Lupin might feel differently about were Harry and Black, but both of them had reasons to be on his side.

And if Lupin was agreeable later, and Tom could let it be known that he was the only one who stood between magical Britain and the possibility of a werewolf on the rampage against their children…

Fear was such a useful tool.

*

“Have you the orb for me?”

Severus swallowed and turned around. He had rehearsed what he would do when Riddle came for the obsidian orb, how he would stand tall and firm, how he would speak important words about the Sorting that would make Riddle pay attention to him—

But all the words crisped to a stop against the floating wall of Riddle’s power, and the amusement in his eyes as he stared at Severus.

Severus slid to a knee and held out the obsidian orb he had used to record the students’ Sortings and magical affinities. Riddle took it from him and spent a moment running his fingers over it. Severus looked down further lest he be tempted to stare and see if the fingers had claws.

“Were there any surprises in the Sorting?”

“The Weasley boy went to Slytherin,” Severus murmured, dropping his head further. He had forgotten what it was like to have that magic focused on him. If he could think about throwing Riddle at his enemies, it was bearable, but this man would also turn on Severus if he didn’t serve the cause of Muggleborns and half-bloods well enough, and Severus knew it. “There were only three Gryffindors.”

Riddle sighed. “I believe at one time I would have rejoiced to hear it. But now, it only shows how successful they have been in creating children who think like them.”

“Will you—will you want me to take on a more active revolutionary role here, my lord? Sir?” Severus didn’t know for sure what title he should use, but Riddle corrected neither.

“Husband your efforts to speak to the half-bloods and Muggleborns,” Riddle said, with a shake of his head. “Your place is too fragile, given your own blood status, to attempt to openly influence the young Slytherins right now, unless one of them comes to you. You have Draco Malfoy under your care, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Severus said cautiously, his brain suddenly in turmoil. He would prefer it if Riddle didn’t ask him to harm Draco.

Riddle laughed, having apparently noticed Severus’s hunching shoulders. “Relax, Severus. I make war on children’s brains, not their bodies. I only wanted to know. And how powerful did his magic seem to you?”

“I don’t think I know how to interpret that part of the orb, sir. My lord.” Severus paused. “Which one would you prefer?”

“Which one would _you_ prefer?”

“Sir,” Severus said at last. That gave acknowledgment of Riddle’s greater power and standing without acknowledging that he had some kind of rightful dominance or inherent power.

 _Even though he does,_ whispered a traitorous, buried part of Severus.

“Very well. I will interpret the results of the orb myself.” Riddle turned as if to leave, and then turned back. “And Severus?”

“Sir,” Severus said, biting his lip against the “my lord” that still wanted to leap out.

“I’ll be sending you a book of some of the spells that I use myself soon, to bind my power and make myself seem weaker than I am. Use them. No one should question you, but if they do, explain that your power is shrinking with age. Some of them believe that of half-bloods. They should accept it.”

Severus breathed through his own resistance to the idea of being thought weaker than he was, and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

As Riddle vanished in a flash of bending light that was not Apparition and did not disturb the protections on the school, Severus consoled himself with the thought that pretending weakness was for such a short while. In the end, he would be on the winning side.

He hoped that he would be permitted to drop the protections in front of Lucius on that far-distant day, and laugh in his bloody face.


End file.
